


Pride of the Summer

by Rìgh_Marbh (Righ_Marbh)



Series: Pride of the Summer [1]
Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel
Genre: Bad Things happen to McGray which means they inevitably also happen to Frey, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern AU, University AU, slowish burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-23 11:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17682395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Righ_Marbh/pseuds/R%C3%ACgh_Marbh
Summary: Modern University AUIan goes to Glasgow to spite his father and does all the most obnoxiously Scottish things he can find, up to and including the Mens Shinty Captain for Edinburgh, Adolphus McGray.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I ought to preface this by saying that I haven’t written fan fiction in nearly a decade and that this only exists because I need to get these idiots out of my head so that I can actually get on with the things that I’m supposed to be doing.  
> Title is from one of the favourite Runrig songs (which is some rare cheek because I have a lot of favourite Runrig song and you’re about to be subjected to all of them) and I’ll leave a wee list of links and translations at the end of chapters.
> 
> (Also, I’ve rolled them back about 5 years for Reasons and also becasue I was curious about what a pre-Disaster McGray might be like.)
> 
> -

Ian couldn’t quite pinpoint just when his life became so bloody _odd_. Every time he thinks that he’s found the turning point, he remembers at least three things that lead to that and then those three things seem to have another three catalysts each.  
If he believed in something like destiny then he might be willing to lay the blame there but he doesn’t and he could just as easily blame centuries worth of inbreeding in his family but his three brothers seem to have turned out, if not _fine_ then at least not quite so disastrous - Laurence was well on his way to Lawyering notoriety (if such a thing indeed existed), Oliver was sedentary and apparently content with it and Elgie was a musical prodigy - so Ian figured that the problem had to be him.

He’d tried reading law at Cambridge, back when he was seventeen and still thought Laurence was everything he wanted to be when he grew up, but that had been so unbearably boring that he turned his hand to medicine at Oxford and, well, the fainting had been unfortunate but rather final. He’d tried applying for the police but the fact was that he was never going to do well taking orders and he’d flunked out of that at well.

If he’d just been able to settle down to a life of very slow luxury like Oliver then things would have been fine and if he’d just been able to put up with his harpy of a step-mother for five more minutes he wouldn’t have managed to talk himself into making such a rash bloody decision.

Yes, he thinks, he could blame Catherine for this whole mess quite nicely. She would be absolutely _mortified_ to think that her nasty little jibe at his academic failures had led him to where he was now and that would serve her right.

Then again, it had been more than just Catherine’s pointed remarks that saw him storming out of London.

‘I can hear ye thinking, y’know.’ The mattress dips a little as McGray turns onto his side. ‘If ye...’

‘No, it’s not that. I’m wondering how I ended up here.’

A huffed breath of laughter raises goosebumps across his shoulder and it’s the first time he’s heard anything close to laughter from McGray since this whole thing started.

‘I’m a wee bit offended ye cannae remember. Should I start again?’

And trust McGray to take it _that_ way.

‘I meant more generally.’

A trail of sleepy, open-mouthed kisses are trailed along his shoulder before McGray presses his face against Ian’s neck and carefully snakes his arms around his very bruised ribs.

No, he can’t blame Catherine entirely. Her comments were really just the final straw. He _could_ blame Laurence for single-handedly undermining his engagement but, then, Eugenia had to take some of the blame for that as well. They would also, he mused, be horrified to consider themselves responsible for his current situation. Ian glances over to where his phone was lying on the bedside table. He was sorely tempted to take a photo and send the entire family group chat a thank you note. Elgie would find it funny at least.

‘I did apologise fir that, didn’t I?’

McGray’s fingers are trailing over the worst of the bruising and he’s doing a fine job of distracting Ian from venturing too far into the recent past.

‘Hmm. Far more enthusiastically than I expected.’

When the doctor told him no strenuous activity, he probably should have asked for clarification on whether or not being pinned under six-foot-odd of demonstrably apologetic Scot counted. But then McGray’s hand shifts just a fraction lower and he decided that he probably wouldn’t have liked the answer anyway.


	2. September

_I still hear the snares in the square, colours ablaze in the evening. The air was still down the stormy hill. It's good to be young and daring._  
_Pride of the Summer,_ Runrig

* * *

 

_I can do this,_ he thinks, _I am utterly alone and it is the most content I’ve ever been._

There’s something deliciously freeing about being a complete and utter failure in the eyes of everyone you know and Ian hasn’t really looked at it from that angle until now. He’s felt dejected and hopeless and even furious enough to throw the furniture around his room and break two fingers in the process. He’s been bitter enough to go out of his way to seek out the kind of pubs where he knows he rubs people the wrong way _just_ to get into fights he knows he can’t realistically win just to feel something other than disappointment and bitter, bitter resentment. He’s been miserable enough to slide down the back of his door at two o’clock in the morning with blood running down his face and just _cry_ about the unfairness of it all.

He’s been childish and pathetic and all manner of unsavoury things (and don’t think his family haven’t pointed that out) but something inside of him was determined to keep fighting and, well, if that something transformed into pettiness and spite then so be it because those were the things that were going to get him through.

But his pettiness pays off when a night of drunkenly sending masses of emails and writing what had to be considered the most obnoxiously simpering personal statement he’s ever read resolves into an unconditional offer to one of the last places anyone would ever expect him to go.

He had the money to escape his family and his failures completely - he could have gone to France or, god forbid, even to the States and lived in relative comfort for years before having to worry about something so inconvenient as a job but anywhere else would have felt like running away. Scotland was, in essence, something of a tactical and, more importantly, _offensive_ retreat. His father turned purple when Ian announced his intentions to move to Glasgow (not to Edinburgh, it was still too close to being nearly civilised in the right light) and Ian has to claim that it’s to study Classics before the man has a stroke. It’s no good gloating over a dead man.

In his more uncertain moments, Ian wonders if it’s too late to actually switch to Classics because perhaps the step he’s taken is a little too big even for himself but he crushes those thoughts under his heels. He doesn’t have to _enjoy_ this. He just has to do it.

Scottish History, Celtic Studies and, Lord preserve him, Gaelic. Every time he sees a club or an event that makes him want to cringe, he signs up for it and if he surprises himself occasionally when something turns out to be interesting then that just takes the edge off. He contemplates taking up Fencing again, if only for something different to do of an evening but then someone who has noted his apparent enthusiasm for all things Scotland points him towards Shinty and when the words _murder-hockey_ are bandied about in jest, he can see an image of his father’s face the first time he was suspended from Eton for fighting - coming home with a bloodied nose and a black eye to face an endless tirade of why the Freys didn’t do that sort of thing - and Ian has signed up for it without asking any more.

It’s through the Shinty club that he meets the people who he tentatively refers to has his ‘friends’ whenever a strenuously polite question about his progress filters through from someone back in England - Mairi MacLean who barely comes up to his elbow but looks as though she could break him in half; James Brown who tells him he can be as asocial as he likes but if he’s a prick, they’ll soon sort him out and then proceeds to buy him drinks all night; and Eilidh Scott who flirts like it’s her first language and is possibly the most tactile person Ian has ever met, who sits in his lap for the duration of the first night at the pub because there’s no seats and she says he’s the least sharp of the lot of them. Several things surprise him - there’s more women, for a start, and they even pad out the men’s team when they have to. There’s more drinking than he had anticipated from a sports club but he quickly finds that it makes it much easier to blend in and when a snide comment about how he shouldn’t have expected much better for Scotland slips out, he receives only sage nods and bright, drunken grins in response.

The first few weeks of term sit idly in his memory as a time of profound discomfort - the sheer number of new people, the noise of University Avenue in the middle of Freshers week, the stress of getting settled in a new flat and a new city when he’s really only ever lived in the middle of London in a large manor with a staff and realising a little too late that he’s forgotten to learn how to cook.

(His first attempts are bland but edible and nothing burns so that, he supposes, is a plus but he will definitely need to spend time over the holidays actually practicing.)

His flat is probably the last vestige of his old life. It’s in the second floor of a converted townhouse just behind the Botanic Gardens and both close enough to the university to be convenient but also far enough away from it to avoid what has been tentatively labelled “the student experience” because Ian knows himself better than anyone and living in the midst of that would have killed him.  
The ceilings are high and the walls are painted a soft, unobtrusive grey and he’s slowly filling it with dark wood bookshelves and leather sofas that his uncle Maurice fobs off on him almost the moment he hears about what Ian has done. The result is a little mismatched sometimes and it’s lacking any kind of really personal touches but it’s quiet and it’s the first space he’s had that is entirely his and he’s really rather fond of it.

Scotland, he thinks, might not be so bad after all.

And then they ask him if he’s free to play against Edinburgh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pride of the Summer - Runrig: https://youtu.be/BhB7gGPARVs
> 
> This week on My Life Is a Mess: I write fan fiction in lectures instead of paying attention and try to live studiously through fictional characters in the hopes that it makes up for the fact that I’ve got no motivation to actually study. 
> 
> This might be the worst idea I’ve ever had but I Will Not Be Stopped.


	3. October

_But when the whistle blows and that battle’s done, these shinty boys shine like the sun. We don’t play for fame, we don’t play for cash. We just play for the glory and the clash of the ash._  
\- _Clash of the Ash_ , Runrig

* * *

 

To be fair, he’d been warned about this from the start - the shinty club was small so it was inevitable that you got thrown in at the deep end but Ian had hoped for something more that three weeks of what might tentatively be called training before they asked if he was free for a game against Edinburgh on Saturday. He had _planned_ to say no but the Glasgow men’s captain was a clever sort and Ian was quite certain that James McNair had him figured out from the beginning and rather that asking, they’d told him where the bus was meeting and tagged on a ‘only if you’re free, of course’ once he’d already been surprised into agreeing.

By the time they reach Edinburgh, Ian is actually beginning to feel something that he might dare to call _good_ about this. It’s nice, actually, to be surrounded a group of people who aren’t expecting him to be an expert in anything but who really just want him to show up and make up the numbers, regardless of his skill and there’s a freeness in that.

Things only get a little bit shaky when they pile off of the bus and McNair looks up from making some comment about the state of the grass and the blood drains from his face a little.

‘Ah shit.’ He’s frowning at something in the distance and Ian isn’t sure he wants to turn around and see what it is. ‘McGray’s back.’

Mairi, who is the only girl playing on the men’s team that afternoon, looks up from tying her thick, unruly curls into a bun and drops the most impressive selection of curses Ian has heard in a long time. He even understands some of them.

‘Fuck it all, he wis meant to be transferring tae Sabhal Mor fir his PhD.’

‘Sorry, who’s McGray?’

‘Edinburgh men’s captain...he’s decent craic and all but he’s built like the back end of a tank and, well, look.’

When he turns around, Ian can see what the concern is about. The man approaching them from the far end of the pitch is at least a head taller than him and broader across the shoulders with black hair tied back in a messy bun and a dark bruise across his jaw. He’s shouting something in rapid-fire Gaelic and Ian turns to McNair to ask something just as he comes into earshot and Ian decides on the spot that he absolutely fucking _hates_ McGray.

‘Aw Christ, McNair, are ye so hard up that yer taking on wee Southron duchesses now?’

It isn’t said with malice, as such, but everything about the man makes Ian’s hackles rise and he stalks off with gritted teeth and hopes to God he gets a good excuse to take a swing at his ankles at some point that afternoon.

The first time Ian knocks into McGray it’s really nothing more than a brush as they both run in opposite directions and Ian makes the mistake of thinking that they’re somehow _equal_. The second time he knocks into him, McGray is moving at full speed (which is unnervingly fast for someone with his sheer bulk) and Ian hunches his shoulders and braces for it but there’s nothing that can be done he wakes up to a bright, clear sky and stormy blue eyes staring down at him. He hasn’t been out for long - the noise of the game is still going on around them, but McGray is offering a hand to help him up and Ian might have taken it had it not been for the unbearably smug grin on his face.

‘C’mon now Duchess, dinnae try an play the hard man.’

There really is no way he’s getting up without help and, even as McGray grips his elbow and pulls, the world spins until he’s found his feet again.

‘There ye are, lass.’

And he’s clapped him on the shoulder and is gone again before Ian can so much as splutter a fuck you to the wind.

It’s a bloodbath by dinner time. Ian had heard someone joke the week before that shinty was just proxy warfare and he’s inclined to believe them. There isn’t an inch of skin on him that isn’t bruised and, though the showers were adequate enough to get the mud and grass stains off, he’s thinking longingly of a long, hot bath back at the flat and a very large glass of wine and his very large, comfortable bed.  
There is, however, the little issue of post-match drink in between him and that future and for that they have decamped to the top of the Royal Mile where they’re wedged themselves into a dark little pub with a rather battered sign declaring that it was the Ensign Ewart. It was about as close to the Royal Mile ever got to a non touristy pub, he supposed, as he looked around at the other patrons, but one or two appeared to have snuck in unnoticed.

Ian gets himself a pint of something innocuous (where beer is concerned he’s found that anything will do so long as it’s not Tennant’s, he’s only made _that_ mistake once) and settles himself at a table in the corner near the bar and has the novel experience of watching two rival sports teams mingling flawlessly as though they weren’t doing their best to hack each other to death with blunt sticks an hour ago. He’s doing a good job of trying to look too tired for conversation, which doesn’t take much pretence in the grand scheme of things really, and he’s left to his own devices until McGray, of all people, drops heavily onto the seat beside him and Ian can feel his blood pressure begin to rise.

‘Ye alright, Duchess?’

‘Stop _calling_ me that.’

‘Ye ken ye dinnae have tae keep up the animosity once it’s over, right? That we really dinnae _actually_ care?’

There are English words in there somewhere, Ian thinks, it’s just a matter of finding them. He doesn’t know what his problem is, really, and he’s not normally so blunt with people even if he can’t bear to be near them but McGray just radiates such infuriating, chaotic energy and it sets his teeth on edge.

‘ _Are_ ye alright though? Ye went down hard there.’

_‘I’m fine.’_

The conversations dies and Ian hopes that it’s been buried but McGray evidently doesn’t know a lost cause when he sees one.

‘Whit is it yer daeing?’

Ian just has to assume he’s talking about university and, well, at least this a script he can follow without thinking.

‘History.’

‘Christ, yer hard work. Why Glasgow?’

Ian sighs, looks McGray up and down and thinks idly that he’s probably studying something irritatingly useful like Engineering or Business.

‘It was as far away from London as I cared to go.’

‘Uh huh...’ He looks at his watch, swears under his breath and drains half a pint in one gulp. ‘...I’ve got tae run and pick up my wee sister. Whit wis yer name again?’

‘Frey...Ian Frey.’

McGray edges his way out from behind the table and stops to fix him with an appraising sort of look.

‘I’ll see ye around then, Frey.’

Ian bloody well hopes not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clash of the Ash - Runrig: https://youtu.be/lztiCxIxpdA  
> (Objectively one of the most hilarious music videos I’ve ever seen. We still dont know why accordion players are Like That)
> 
>  
> 
> *Sabhal Mòr Ostaig is the Gaelic medium campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands on Skye and it is Glorious.


	4. November

_When I came to Glasgow, on a quest I did embark. I spent my hours in the Snaffle, the Islay and the Park. But now I’m getting older and I’m weary of the drink and I think it’s just about the time to find the missing like._  
\- The Island Boy - Trail West

* * *

 

He’d expected November in Glasgow to be biting cold and wall-to-wall blizzards so Ian is a little confused when he’s melting in his fur-lined overcoat on the walk up to the university but it’s nice, actually, because the wind is crisp but the late autumn sunshine paints everything in shades of gold and he can’t quite explain _what_ it feels like but he knows that this is something he’s going to be able to recall decades from now. It doesn’t make him enjoy being in Scotland any more and it doesn’t lessen the ache of missing his old life that’s been creeping up on him for weeks now but it’s nice it it’s own way and he can live with that.

He’s missed practice a few times and he knows there’s been several other games - in Glasgow and St Andrews and Aberdeen and he thinks they won some of them if the group chat that he eventually had to mute was anything to go by - but with essay deadlines and exams rolling in no one seems to mind over much. November in Glasgow, for Ian at least, is a small haven of work and deadlines and revision that he hadn’t expected to enjoy before he has to decide what he’s doing for Christmas.

‘Ye trying tae prop that wall up, Duchess?’

And just like that, his bubble bursts and _fucking McGray_ is walking across Professor’s Square, squinting in the bright sunlight and wearing the most obnoxious grin. They’ve only run into each other a handful of times since that first game and Ian has always made very careful, well-rehearsed excuses to leave but it’s always been in Edinburgh and Glasgow has always been free of McGray’s unwanted presence and his bloody nicknames.

It’s the first time he’s seen him in something other than a sports kit and Ian doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry at the vision that’s approaching him. He’s never considered himself a great follower of fashion and he’s always favoured nothing more complicated than dark colours and neat tailoring but McGrey is either doing this for effect or he’s a complete lunatic. Ian is inclined to favour the latter.  
At a distance, the dark jeans are just about normal but everything else - from his shirt to his scarf and even to the blazer he’s carrying over his arm - is in mismatched tartans in shades of greys and blues, topped with a heavy, black leather jacket with scuffed shoulders and elbows. He’s got a brown leather satchel slung over one shoulder and a coffee in hand and it’s only when Ian spots the dark outline of a motorcycle helmet at his hip that McGray starts to make a little more sense.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I dinnae ken whit it’s like at OxBridge but universities here actually dae like tae talk tae each other.’

He reached Ian’s little suntrap and carefully leans his bag against the step. There’s a large purple thistle painted around the helmet because of course there is.

‘I hardly think you’re in any position to talk about OxBridge.’

‘I reckon I am, I wis at Oxford fir a year right out ae school. Biggest bunch ae wankers I’ve ever had the misfortune tae meet.’

‘All my family have gone to Oxford.’

Not strictly true, he knows, because neither Oliver nor Elgie showed any inclination to academics and he himself dropped out, but that wasn’t the point.

‘From whit ye’ve said about London, I dinnae think that proves me wrong.’

Ian shifts so that he’s sitting on the stone bannister and if it lets the sun fall directly into McGray’s eyes well then that’s just an added bonus.

‘Yes, well. That’s not really the point. Why are you here?’

‘I wis asked tae present a wee first year lecture on the basics ae Gaelic Folklore.’

Which was the exact lecture he was waiting on.

In all their encounters, he’s still never worked out exactly with it is McGray does and he has the most terrible sinking feeling but his mouth is already running away from him.

‘And you just happen to be an expert on that?’

The way he smirks in response makes Ian want to slap him but, instead, he sits on his hands and trying to remember if anyone said anything about this lecture being related to their exam. He could probably get away with listening to the recording of it but then he would have to put up with hearing McGray through headphones and that seemed even worse.

‘As it happens, aye. Whit’s it tae you?’

Nothing, as far as he’s concerned but there’s a spark of mischief in his eyes and Ian dreads for a moment that McGray actually knows that Ian is trying desperately to think of ways to get out of this.

‘Oh nothing, it just seems a rather niche subject that’s all.’

McGray closes the gap between them and comes to lean on the bannister, directly beside Ian.

‘Well see, I kinda like a challenge.’

When that sends an unexpected bolt of heat though him, Ian nearly yelps and scrambles away from McGray but manages to compose himself at the last minute. _This is a wind up_ , he realises, _the bastard knows he makes my skin crawl and he’s taking delight in it just to be contrary_.

So Ian clears his throat, slips off of his perch and straightens his jacket.

‘Well I probably ought to go, things to do.’

He’s edging past McGray and striding off in the wrong direction as quickly as he can. He has just enough time to double back and perhaps he could sneak into the back row and hunker down and just hope McGray doesn’t see him.

‘Pretty sure the Humanities theatre is the other way, Frey.’

Fuck.

The lecture is, objectively, absolutely fine. Ian sidles into the back row before anyone else arrives, slinks as far down as he can on the uncomfortable curving pews and prays to any gods that happen to be passing that someone tall sits in front of him.

As is the way of things - his back starts to cramp after a few minutes, forcing him to sit up properly, and everyone sitting in front of him is tiny. He has an unimpeded view of the lectern and, worse, when McGray strides into the room - now wearing the dark grey tartan blazer as opposed to the leather jacket - Ian realises with horror that the first thing he does is scan the room for him. McGray meets his eye and grins. Ian just scowls and tries to look anywhere else.

It’s hard because, much to his chagrin, McGray is a bloody good speaker and his enthusiasm and passion for these obscure, half-forgotten stories is downright infectious. He’s even marginally easier to understand than normal and when he catches Ian on the way out (and he tried to sneak out with the crowds but McGray caught his arm before he even knew what was happening) he even says as much.

‘Aye well I _can_ speak English, ye ken. I jist dinnae like tae.’

‘You say that as though it’s a foreign language.’ Except he realises a little belatedly that, to McGray, it probably is. ‘I mean...oh...forget it.’

‘So are ye taking Gaelic as well or is this jist tae pass the time?’

They’re walking out into the quads and now that the pre-lecture rush has passed, the space is completely empty. The pillars in the cloisters have been wrapped in fairy lights for Christmas and, as the light dies, it looks really quite picturesque.

‘I am.’

‘How’re ye finding it?’

Ian isn’t sure he likes this sort of casual interest. He almost longs for his to start calling him Duchess again, just so he can have a good reason to be angry at him.

‘Languages are puzzles and...well, I like puzzles I suppose. What?’

McGray is looking at him as though he’s spouted another head.

‘That’s it? Ye dinnae _feel_ anything?’

‘Am I supposed to? Languages are just words, they’re not...’

‘Fucking hell Frey...so whit about English? Is that jist words?’

He can’t see what’s so confusing about it. There was a methodology to studying languages - patterns and rules that you could follow and, even when the rules were broken, you just _learned_ it. It was nice.

‘Well...yes?’

‘Whit about poetry? Songs, stories?’

They had slowed to a halt in the middle of the cloisters and McGray was becoming more and more animated as he talked, throwing his arms out wide.

‘They’re...they’re nice enough but they’re still just words.’

McGray drops his arms to his sides and just shakes his head at Ian as though he’s some kind of enigma.

‘Ye live in _this_ city and ye really think that? Whit are ye daeing the night?’

Sleeping off a growing headache from this conversation at this rate.

‘Well, nothing I suppose.’

‘Gid. Will ye let me take ye out?’

Ian’s first instinct is to laugh and refuse outright. The notion of willingly going anywhere with McGrey is ridiculous - he can barely put up with him for half an hour in a pub after a game so why in God’s name would he willing submit to a night in his sole company? Except he knows full well that he’s going to say yes. He doesn’t _want_ to but he can feel his body betraying him and sentencing him to a night of garbled conversation in a grubby pub with a sticky floor and yet there he goes, saying yes as though he wants to do anything other than never look at McGray again.

‘Oh alright then, fine.’

This, he thinks later, was probably his first mistake.

It isn’t a _bad_ night, he reflects the next morning. McGray was so single minded in his determination to prove him wrong (and Ian still isn’t sure about what exactly) that he doesn’t even stop to call him Duchess or Princess or Lassie the whole night. He was dragged from pub to pub - open mic nights, poetry slams, tiny comedy clubs hidden the the arches of bridges, sets of little five minute theatre shows in buildings that Ian walks past every day and has never even stopped to consider and they finish, rather anti-climactically, standing outside the kind of pub that Ian had been dreading all night.

It’s exterior is painted in beige and dark green and McGray is looking at Ian expectantly, as though he ought to be impressed.

‘What?’

‘Fàilte gu taigh-òsta nan Gàidheal!' Ian blinks at him, thinks he recognises some of the words in there, but McGray accent is so thick and his speech so rapid that he loses most of it. ‘Aw fir fuck sake - tell me ye ken about the Teuchter Triangle?’

That doesn’t particularly help either.

‘It’s a...pub?’

‘It’s _The Park_. Ye’ve been studying this fir how long and ye’ve never heard ae it?’

‘They’re a little more focused on the weather than on alcohol, I’m afraid.’

And McGray is already shouldering open the door and huffing about _‘nae fucking culture’_ and all Ian can do is follow him inside.

 

It is not as dark or as grubby as the exterior makes him think and it’s a damn sight larger than the Ensign at the very least. It is, however, packed to the gunwales and Ian winds up standing a little too close to McGray for his own comfort. He would have complained about the novelty of having to up to talk to someone but there’s little chance of conversation once the band - the kind of bands that Ian resolutely dreads - strikes up from their little corner by the disused fireplace and what surprises him is how young the crowd is for how deliriously old fashioned the music is and he becomes aware of McGray watching him.

‘What?’

Trying to shout above the din is a wasted effort but McGray gets his meaning and leans in closer to his ear.

‘Ye look like yer seriously contemplating taking that stick out ae yer arse.’

Ian ignores the sharp shiver that it sends down his spine and rolls his eyes. McGray just laughs and his nose brushes against Ian’s cheek which makes him stumble which means McGray has to catch him and hold him steady.

‘Careful now, a’Phrionnsa-beag.’

Ian manages to catch the word _little_ in there and flushes. He’s been drinking steadily all night - not to excess and he’s had plenty of fresh air between drinks the way he’s been dragged from place to place but he becomes acutely aware of the fact the McGray, who has the bike with him, hasn’t been drinking at all and probably has him at a disadvantage.

There is a chance, Ian thinks later as he’s letting himself back into his flat, that although drink makes McGray slightly better company, there’s a very small chance it even makes him _good_ company and that is even worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Island Boy - Trail West:https://youtu.be/j494dfH94yI
> 
>  
> 
> A break from the Runrig, if only because it’s hard to mention The Park without bringing up Trail West and because I take great delight in forcing my ridiculous tase in music on other people. For a general idea of what The Park sounds like when there’s a Trad session on, see here: https://youtu.be/WZl8CgBj0bY
> 
>  
> 
> *Prionnsa-beag: Little prince.  
> *Teuchter: A Scots insult for any Gaelic-speaking Highlander that was eventually co-opted by the English to mean anyone from Scotland. So like all go insult it’s become a bit of a badge. The Teuchter Triangle is a set of three pubs on Argyll Street that were (and are) often frequentred by Gaels.


	5. December

_I don't know if you can see the changes that have come over me, these last few days I've been afraid that I might drift away._  
\- Caledonia, Dougie MacLean

* * *

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       The Scots, Ian decides as he’s standing on a frosty grass pitch in a pair of shorts in the middle of December, are the maddest bastards going. They’d told him that shinty was generally a winter sport and he’d quietly told himself that that was _fine_ because this was a modern university with indoor sports halls and he still hadn’t quite processed the fact that shinty is not, has never been nor would it ever be an _indoor_ sport. It did quite enough damage as an outdoor one.

He’s quite certain that this is how he’s going to die.

Running would probably help in the long run but, in order to do that, he has to run through the freezing air and that’s even worse so he opts for huddling in the corner and just taking the jokes about his constitution on the chin. The downside of that, however, is that it gives him time to consider his options for Christmas.

Being in Glasgow, he hadn’t spoken about the major catalysts for his departure from London out loud in months and he had almost (but not quite) managed to forget that his ex-fiancée was marrying his older brother and that he would have to face them over Christmas dinner if he decided to go home.

He did not want to go home.

But he had never missed a Christmas with Uncle Maurice who, aside from Elgie, was the last member of his family he could actually tolerate and it seemed silly to cut his nose off to spite his face.

So he was going.

But he wasn’t happy about it.

Things didn’t get better when he arrived on the Plantard Estate on Christmas Eve to find the Freys assembled and things definitely didn’t get better when his phone buzzed on his bedside table just as he was about to drift off.

‘What?’

‘Oh aye and Nollaig Chridheil tae you an all.’

‘McGrey, how the hell did you get my number?’

‘Sports ball. I thought ye were awfy pished.’

He had, perhaps, been a little overzealous with the wine that night. He was quite certain that Eilidh even dragged him up to dance at some point. It was, blessedly, all a bit of a blur.

‘Then why are you calling me?’

‘Dinnae ken. See...now _I’m_ awfy pished. Where about are ye?’

‘My uncle has an estate near the Forest of Dean.’

‘Of course it’s a bloody estate.’

Ian doesn’t know why but McGray takes a really absurd delight in all the way Ian lives up to his stereotypes.

‘Of course. You?’

There’s a beat of embarrassed silence.

‘My folks have a wee estate outside Dundee.’

Ian must have drank more than he through at dinner because the squawk of laughter he lets out is entirely uncharacteristic.

‘You _hypocrite!_ ’

‘Ah, here, naw. This is no the same thing...it’s...och shut the fuck up. Has abody ever told ye that yer a sanctimonious prick?’

For some reason, it comes over as a compliment.

‘Yes. You do. All the time.’

Silence again and Ian can hear the wind on McGray’s end of the line. The storm that hit them earlier has already blown itself out and left several metres of crisp, clean snow on the ground.

‘Whit’s it like?’

‘Now you’re just trying out make small talk...’ Ian hates talking on the phone at the best of times but there’s something especially odd about talking to someone you don’t even like, at practically the other end of the country, at quarter to midnight on Christmas Eve. ‘...it’s big and old...seventeenth century I think...’

‘Any gid ghost stories?’

‘Please don’t tell me you believe in all of that?’

‘All ae it. Whit else?’

‘That’s it really. It’s big and old and there’s a lot of trees...some deer as well.’

‘Dinnae tell me yer one ae these wankers that...’

Ian knew where this was going at least.

‘No. God’s above no. We usually go out on Christmas morning to hunt but it’s just a few of us and it’s one deer. I can’t abide the noise and the pageantry and...the mess, frankly.’

‘I have noticed yer a wee bit precious about that.’

The statement is both ponderous and provoking at the same time.

‘I am n...no, do you know what? It’s Christmas and I’m going to do the magnanimous thing and not argue with you.’

‘Even though I called ye in the middle ae the night because I wis drunk and lonely and bored?’

Drunk and bored was one thing. Ian can think of a few very stupid things that he can lay claim to doing when he was drunk and bored but _lonely_? Ian doesn’t think that anyone in their right mind would call _him_  for the sake of being al title lonely.

‘I thought you were there with your family?’

‘Aye, but they’re aa in bed and...I dunno. There’s different kinds ae lonely, ye ken?’

Ian supposes that he does but this is straying into uncomfortably sentimental territory and so Ian pushes them back into the safe haven of bickering over everything from beer to books to politics and he wakes up to the sun streaming through the windows and his phone is stuck to his cheek and he can’t even remember falling asleep but Elgie is hammering on his door and when he checks the call log he realises that they talked for four hours and if that doesn’t count as madness then he doesn’t know what does.

Breakfast is strained - the conversation is polite but more distant that ever and Ian doesn’t help it by only given non-committal answers about his studies. Elgie, who is so pale as to be almost translucent against a backdrop of bright white snow in the window behind him, is the one who nearly drops Ian into it.

‘Who were you talking to last night?’

He doesn’t know why he should be embarrassed but Ian fumbles for a handy lie.

‘I was playing back old lectures.’

‘You were laughing.’

‘You’re hearing things.’

He scoffs in the way that only a fifteen year old can.

‘Oh come off it Ian, have you met someone?’

His father places his knife and fork on the table a little too hard and Elgie drops the subject.

Things are fine until Laurence and Eugenia appear just before dinner and Ian is a little bit touched at the way his father takes his side but it’s tempered by the fact that he really, desperately doesn’t care any more. He has one day left here and then he’ll be crawling into bed in the peace and quiet of his own little corner of the world that he’s carved out in the last place he ever expected to be.  
He doesn’t even mind the tension at the table over dinner and when his phone buzzes to alert him to a message, he barely even hears Catherine launch into her diatribe on the shocking manner of the youth of today which was some cheek considering that she was only ten years Ian’s senior.

_Dinnae take me falling asleep fir surrender. Yer full ae pish and I’ll prove it._

It takes a minute to sound out the text from McGray and another to work out just what he was talking about. The last thing Ian can remember arguing about was whether or not the views in the West Isles were superior to those in the Lake District.

He hedges his bets and sends an equally ambiguous reply.

_And how do you propose to do that?_

He doesn’t expect a reply straight away.

_Are ye back in Glasgow for Hogmanay?_

And even as Ian is typing out the question, another message comes through immediately after the last one.

_New Year, ye useless tit._

Why he didn’t just say that then. Elgie is absolutely itching to see what Ian is dong and, aside from a few pointed tuts, the conversation at the table has died down and Ian is terribly self-conscious about it.

_I am. Why?_

He glances around the table at his audience.

‘Sorry, an email chain...I can’t seem to work out how to turn it off. No, Elgie, I don’t need help. Just give me a moment.’

He really should just excuse himself but there’s something delightfully petty about just sitting there.

_We’re going on an adventure._

And, in hindsight, he really should have realised that something was going on by this point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caledonia - Dougie MacLean: https://youtu.be/wP8A9rtg0iI
> 
> *Nollaig Chridheil: Merry Christmas.


	6. January

_I'll never know, I'll never know the ruminations of your mind  
I'll never know, _

_The fear of fate, the call of home, the expectations left behind  
I'll never know._

\- _The Rising Moon_ , Tide Lines

* * *

When McGray said adventure, Ian had spent the whole journey back to Glasgow growing more and more terrified of what he had planned. By the time he makes it to the flat, he had progressed to imagining having to hike to the top of a snowy mountain where they would no doubt freeze to death so that McGray could prove a point.

So when McGray turns up at six o’clock in the morning on the thirty-first of December with nothing more exotic than an extra helmet and jacket and tells him not to pack like a princess otherwise it wont all fit on the bike, Ian is possibly more confused than when he started.

‘Ye are alright on the bike? I can go back and get the car if ye want but I thought this would be quicker.’

‘Where on earth are we going that requires us to get anywhere quickly at this time?’

‘Well it’s about five hours driving time if we go straight there but I figured ye’d probably no want tae be on the bike fir that long so I thought we could go the scenic route. Cut through the Trossachs, up tae Oban, double back a wee bit tae come through Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe then straight on tae Skye.’

Ian listens to all of this and then runs back upstairs and stuffs another woollen jumper into his bag as McGray laughs at him before shooing him out of the door.

 

He nearly changes his mind when he sees the bike. It’s big and low and a million miles from the sporty, spluttery thing he was expecting, with a matte black fuel tank that has been painted with thistles to match the ones on his helmet and when McGray swings one leg over it in a smooth, practiced movement, Ian doesn’t know where to look and fumbles when the spare jacket is tossed to him. He shrugs into it and needs a little help with the helmet but then he’s faced with the indignity of trying to get on and _stay_ on without having to press himself into McGray’s back and cling on for dear life.

He’s not _afraid_ , no. Just fully aware that he’s putting his life in the hands of a certified madman with no apparent grasp on how much space he took up in a room and he’s a little concerned that that mentality is going to translate onto the road.

But he’s worrying about nothing and McGray turns out to be more inclined to take his time and Ian _doesn’t_ cling to his waist because he’s scared of falling off but because he’s absolutely frozen by the time they’re coming out the other side of Dumbarton and he’s grateful for the dry, bright day because he’s not sure he could have done this in the rain.

They stop every hour or so or, more realistically, they stop every time McGray passes something vaguely interesting and drags Ian across fields and up the sides of hills to point out rock carvings and castles and battlefields and Frey doesn’t stop him because he gets the feeling that this is as much for McGray’s benefit as his. He asks him as much when they stop a a little car park at the side of the road near Glen Coe and McGray produces a massive flask of coffee from the depths of a saddle bag and Frey nearly weeps with joy when he passes it to him.

‘What possessed you to do this?’

‘Hmm, whit?’

‘Drive halfway across the country with someone you don’t even like?’

Ian knows that he could ask himself the same question but McGray _offered_. Ian was just the idiot that accepted.

‘I had tae get out ae the house. My folks normally stay up at Dundee when Pansy’s in school so I usually have it tae masel...I love them tae bits bit they’re daein’ my fucking heid in...and who says I dinnae like ye?’

‘Would you like the insults in chronological or alphabetical order?’

McGray barks out a laugh and comes to sit beside him on the low wall looking out over the hills.

‘I wouldnae insult ye if I didnae ken ye can give as gid as ye get. Here, mind how I told ye the Campbells were traitorous bastards?’

It had been the key topic of most of his lectures since they left Glasgow.

‘I think you might have mentioned it.’

‘Gid, because here’s where they really made a name fir themselves...’

 

In the end, it took nearly twelve hours from leaving Glasgow for them to finally pulling up outside of small, triangular log cabin on the west coast of Skye that looked out across a small bay.

‘Was that a distillery we passed?’

‘Aye, Talisker. I reckon even you cannae turn yer nose up at that yin.’

Ian could not but it was more entertaining to needle him.

‘Actually I prefer the Islay distilleries.’

If he was expecting McGray to give forth on how his taste was atrocious, he was sorely disappointed.

‘Jist as well there’s a bottle ae Ardbeg in the bags then, eh?’

The cabin itself is far bigger than it appears from the outside, though it’s long and low and has a decidedly Nordic quality about it. The furniture is all made from sturdy wood and there’s a clear theme in mind but almost every surface is piled high with fur throws and woolen blankets that are clearly hand-made and the effect is very homey. There’s an open fire set into one wall but when Ian casts an eye over the little wicker basket beside it, there’s no wood - only rectangular lumps of what looks like dried mud.

‘The room jist there’s the warmest. Away ye go and I’ll get the fire on.’

Despite not being quite sure what use the dark brown bricks will be, Ian leaves him to it and slips into a narrow room that is taken up entirely by a double bed that has been piled high with fur blankets. There’s a tiny table wedged into the furthers cornet that has been piled high with books, topped with an old table lamp and, on closer inspection, titles like _Gaelic Ghosts: Tales of the Supernatural from Scotland_ and _Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist_ jump out at him and he realises a little dumbly that this is _McGray’s_ room and he’s just given it up because he knows Ian is touchy about the cold.

He drops his bag at the foot of the bed, shrugs out of the motorcycle jacket with no small degree of trouble and wanders back out into the long, narrow living room to find it permeated by a thin fog of smoke that smells distinctively, well, smoky. The thought even sounds stupid to Ian but he’s trying to pinpoint just where he’s smelled it before when the thought hits him in the chest and lodges there quite uncomfortably. This is what McGray smells like. Ian always thought it was some strange kind of aftershave but it’s _this_. Whisky and peat fires.

‘The smoke’ll clear in a wee minute, it’s jist no been on fir a while. Drink?’

McGray is waving two crystal glasses and a full bottle of whisky at him from the small kitchen at the furthest end of the room and Ian likes him a just little bit more when he sees how generously he pours his measures.

 

There’s wine as well, and a steak pie that looks like it was designed to feed a small army and Ian is a little jealous because he still hasn’t gotten around to learning how to cook anything more impressive than a rather bland bolognese but, as he’s already learned, alcohol smoothes the rough edges to McGray and the downright sharp edges to himself and he is in real danger of admitting that he’s enjoying himself.

‘Whit would ye normally dae?’

‘For New Year? Oh there’s always some party...it was The Ritz last year, I think, Eugenia was rather upset when her dress clashed with the decorations...’

‘Eugenia?’

Ian almost shakes his head and tells him that it’s no one, just a society darling he used to know, because it’s really beginning to feel like that but he’s still a little raw after seeing her at Christmas and he feels like being petty about it.

‘Oh, my ex-Fiancée. We separated just before I moved to Glasgow.’

‘Good on ye, whit a ridiculous bloody name.’

Ian can only arch his eyebrow at that.

‘It wasn’t my doing, she decided that my brother was the more, ah, _lucrative_ option...and where do you get off on calling anyone’s name ridiculous, _Adolphus_?’

McGray looks as though he’s just been slapped.

‘Fucking hell, Frey, I’m sorry...I didnae mean...’

Ian chuckles and waves it off.

‘I liked the idea of her, I certainly didn’t love her. My pride was far more wounded than my heart.’

‘Well then I’ll also have ye know that I have every right tae take the piss because I have a ridiculous name. Adolphus isnae even the worst ae it.’

‘Oh?’

He clears his throat a little dramatically.

‘Adolphus Endeavour Fiach Ossian McGray.’

‘You’re taking the piss.’

‘Am not. My mother’s a lunatic.’

‘No, no one could possibly...you are winding me up. Please say you’re winding me up.’

McGray only manages a heartbeat of sincere silence before he lets out an almighty cackle of laughter.

‘Aye alright, alright. Endeavour really is my middle name though, my mother has a thing about detective fiction and she’s still trying to talk me intae CID.’

And that was how Ian found the story of his multitude of failures being coaxed out of him. McGray turned out to be a sympathetic audience for the most part and provided hot chocolate laced with a liberal helping of whisky after the fact and shooed Ian out of the back door to where the moonless sky blended almost seamlessly into the sea.

 

Ian had been assured that Hogmanay, that is to say New Years Eve, in Scotland was something that was absolutely not to be missed but somewhere between the torchlight processions, music festivals and firework displays, he rather thought that sitting on the back step of a log cabin with a very potent hot chocolate, looking out across the dark, rough waters of the Hebridean Sea was preferable.

The company might have been improved but McGray was sitting at the other side of the step, his legs tucked under him (and how he managed that on the stone step Ian would never understand) and a thick woollen blanket around his shoulders as he read a thin volume of conference papers by the light coming from the kitchen window.

If Ian was honest with himself, maybe the company wasn’t so _very_ terrible either.

 

McGray must have been thinking along the same lines because, as the small clock in the cabin began to chime midnight, he lay his book carefully on the ground, brushed his fingers against Ian’s jaw just enough to give him some kind of warning and then kissed him so softly that Ian forgot how to breathe.

It’s over before the clock has finished striking and by the time Ian blinks and processes what had just happened McGray had returned to his book and is trying to hide a smug grin behind his mug.

‘I...’

‘Ist, mo phrionnsa. It’s tradition.’

Ian knows a way out when he hears one. There’s an invitation there to forget all of it and move on and a promise as well - that nothing more will come of this until it’s his move. Which is just as well because Ian isn’t sure he remembers how to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Rising Moon - Tide Lines: https://youtu.be/LhqhlmepHsE
> 
> Can I just say that looking up lyrics for bands with Very Pronounced Accents is a wild ride and I really don’t know /what/ some folk are hearing out there but ye gods it’s awfy wrong.
> 
> *Ist - Shoost, wheesht, quiet.  
> Mo Phrionnsa - my prince (without the ‘beag’ this time becasue it seems a little patronising given the circumstances.)
> 
> I’m a horrendous sap, I know.  
> I don’t care.


	7. February

  _Our destinies divide, and therefore live we all,_

_all live to die, and rise to fall._

_No sadness now or blame but a memory and a flame_

_to burn beyond the passing of us all._

\- _Farewell_ , Skipinnish

* * *

 

Ian tells no one about the trip to Skye or the kiss or even that he’s back in Scotland until the second semester starts and he _has_ to go out and see people. When no one corners him for details at training, he’s left to assume that McGray has said nothing of it either and, slowly, one of the little knots of panic in his chest begins to loosen. 

Over the course of the next several weeks, Ian manages to variously convince himself that it was a hallucination brought on by Uncle Maurice’s punch, a fever dream and even a very elaborate plot to cause him further embarrassment, presumably orchestrated by Laurence.

It has been suggested to Ian on several occasions that he might just have a preference for men over women and he has always shrugged it off before now and sought the kind of normality he thought he could find with someone like Eugenia. He wasn’t ashamed of it, persay, it just hadn’t figured prominently in the sort of life he had imagined for himself and whether or not _he_ was ashamed of it, well his family would still have other ideas which is why the conspiracy theory made the most sense to him.

 

McGray gives him space and when they meet at games or social events he’s returned to the balshy pain in the arse that Ian is still certain he hates. It’s a kind of hatred that he’s growing to enjoy, however, and they nearly get into a full-blown fistfight one evening until McGray catches his eye, frowns and then stalks away with a shake of his head.

Separate from this are the conversations they have just between the two of them - text messages from McGray usually consist of pictures of dogs he’s found on his travels around the country (and he travels _a lot_ , Ian realises. He receives one photograph of a large malamute being blown nearly sideways with a location tag of Stornoway and his query gains him a picture of McGray himself _also_ looking as though he’s about to be blown off of the pier and looking far too thrilled about it if Ian’s honest) whilst Ian usually sends him photos of Scottish idiosyncrasies, demanding an explanation.

Sometimes it’s phone calls. Ian has a particular problem in the second semester with a Celtic tutor who just wont answer emails and Ian doesn’t understand the first thing about Medieval Welsh Poetry and he’s on the verge of tearing his hair out when McGray calls with an apparently funny story about a humorously shaped vegetable at a farmers market in Fife and an old lady campaigning for the Tories who found it abhorrent and Ian is just about wound up enough to monologue on the subject of fucking Welsh poets and McGray teaches him more about the subject in half an hour than he’s learned in three lectures and he even throws in a recipe for venison stew that a wee auld woman has just given him, after being very clear that there’s a very stark difference between ‘little old ladies’ and ‘wee auld wimmen’ and Ian just has to sort of accept that this what McGray is _like_ when he’s allowed out on his own.

 

February, then, is characterised by stress - stress about uncommunicative lecturers, stress about the wedding invitation that lands on his doorstep for July (and they’ve done that quickly, haven’t they?), and most of all it’s stress about Ian’s strange idea that people can tell just by looking at him that he kissed Adolphus McGray.

 _No_ , his traitorous brain supplies, _Adolphus McGray kissed you. You sat there like an idiot and did nothing._

 

And Ian rather intends to _continue_ doing nothing, even if that makes him a colossal idiot because he’s already surprised himself by not running as far as he can (and Spain is apparently very nice this time of year) and he’s not sure he can handle any more surprising things.

The other thing that February is characterised by is Celtic Connections and Ian is pleasantly surprised to find that not everything involves an accordion. He sees McGray at odd times and in odd places throughout the festival but it’s never a convenient time and they always seem to just miss each other by minutes running for trains or lectures or gigs and eventually Ian has to ask if the man ever actually works on his PhD and what he gets in return is a full week of photographs of old manuscripts and an hour-by-hour account of what it takes to translate a medieval manuscript that he refuses to admit is actually very funny.

 

Elgie gets a week’s holiday in the middle of the month, just as he turns sixteen, and turns up on Ian’s doorstep unannounced but he can only be angry for so long because good _God_ he’s missed his irritating little brother and the scathing phone call he receives from his stepmother is absolutely worth it to have someone other than McGray and all of the problems he presents to think about.

‘I can’t believe it, you know, I expected to find you bitter and miserable and sticking it out just to prove a point but you’re _actually_ happy here, aren’t you?’

They’re sitting in a little bakery that’s a touch too hipster for Ian’s taste but they make their doughnuts fresh and fill them with real, homemade jam that even has seeds in it as opposed to that

awful jelly so he puts up with it and Elgie is studying him with an intelligence that stretched for beyond his years.

‘That might be pushing it a little. I’m...’ But he lets his brother’s words sink in and thinks about all the inside jokes with the shinty club and the satisfaction of getting good results for hard work and the little tugs in his chest whenever he looks at his phone and realises that McGray is calling and realises that this is perhaps not the time to adhere to the Frey family stoicism. ‘...actually no. No, I think I _am_ happy.’

‘So _have_ you met someone?’

Ian contemplates telling him for about half a second and then remembers that this is _Elgie_ and whilst he might trust his little brother with his life, he certainly doesn’t trust him with a secret when he knows half a glass of wine will have it half way around London before tea time.

‘One day you’re going to come to realise that you don’t have to be in a relationship to be happy.’

‘Oh pish. I know full well that’s true but you keep smiling at your phone and I know you were talking to someone at Christmas and you were completely incommunicado over New Year so either come up with a better lie or come clean.’

Ian slumps back in his seat and thinks very carefully for a moment.

‘If you tell anyone this, Elgie, I swear to god your life will be very short and it won’t be worth living.’ To his dismay, Elgie seems thrilled by the prospect rather than put off. ‘There might be someone but, and this is the thing I really want to you take on board alright, I don’t _know_.’

‘You don’t know what? If you love them? Or if they love you?’

In that moment Ian wishes he was sixteen and that naive again.

‘Frankly, I’m not sure I even _like_ him. He’s rude, unhelpful, obstinate and hands down the most irritating, impossible, infuriating prick I’ve ever ever met and, yet, he’s...funny and he’s surprisingly kind when he wants to be and he’s _loyal_ and...I don’t know.’

He realises too late that Elgie is looking at him with wide eyes.

‘He?’

‘Elgie, if you breathe a word of this...’

And the shock on his face fades into pale, shaking relief.

‘Ian, I thought I was the only one.’

Ian blinks once, twice and only then does his meaning filter through.

‘You’re?’

‘As a maypole.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hmm. Birds of a feather, eh? So New Year?’

 

He tells him everything. Mostly the uncertainties, to be sure, but there’s a relief in being able to empty a bottle of wine between them in the flat and talk more frankly than they have in years and Ian hates himself for being so wrapped up in his own problems that he missed years of Elgie struggling silently on his own when Ian himself was so blasé about his own sexuality and when he leaves at the end of the week, Ian nearly tells him to fuck school and apply to the Royal Conservatoire and just move into his spare room and he misses him from the moment he gets on the train.

 

For the first time ever, Ian calls McGray and though it doesn’t make him any more _certain_ , it does easy the pain in his chest a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Farewell - Skipinnish:https://youtu.be/twTEeqkKjVQ
> 
> I have to offer apologies for the fact that the only video I can find for this is a live one off of somoene’s phone BUT, it does have the added benefit of letting you see what I think my version of McGray sounds like. 
> 
> Now Skipinnish are my absolute favourite band (which always throws people a little when they meet me because I am a Great Big Goth) to the point where I was banned from mentioning them outside of assignments last year and this song paraphrases one of my favourite Gaelic idioms: Thig crìoch air an t-saoghal ach mairidh gaol is ceòl: The world may come to an end, but love and music will endure.
> 
> So there you go. 
> 
> You’ve learned a thing. 
> 
> And I’m still putting off university work (oddly enough an essay about Medieval Welsh Poety) to write this at 1am.


	8. March

_A whisper and a prayer, a hand that’s always there, no partial fancy can betray._

_And as I close my eyes, I feel the strength of my convictions say goodbye, and for my heart I cry._

\- Streets Of Dreamers - Tide Lines 

* * *

 

Ian is a little bit surprised at the sheer strength of rugby fever that bursts to the fore when the Six Nations begins. He was a private school boy so, naturally, this is one thing he can at least share a little enthusiasm about and James McNair thumps him on the back enthusiastically when he meets them in Queen Street station on the Saturday morning of the England-Scotland match and receives a good ribbing for being the only one there in an England shirt and Ian takes it because he’s learning that they only mostly mean it but he does realise that he’s going to be one stark white shirt nestled amongst a sea of blue but that’s alright, they say, they’ll let him know if he starts being a twat which is as good as saying they’ll protect him (even if it’s only from himself) and it’s quite touching in the grand scheme of things.

McGray is waiting for them at Haymarket and Ian spots his head over the top of the crowd before they’ve even reached the top of the stairs but, when the sea of bodies parts, Ian stops dead in his tracks and Mairi runs straight into the back of him. The Scotland top and leather jacket was to be expected but the kilt - in gunmetal grey and black and soft blues - is what stops him and he can feel his heart rate skyrocket.

‘Oh c’mon Frey, don’t let the fact ye cannae stand him ruin this.’

He nearly caught out enough and says that his _dislike_ of McGray is the easy part but then he remembers that no one knows anything about what has developed between them and so he grits his teeth and covers the ground between them, each step a little harder than the last.

And then McGray turns to see them and absolutely _beams_ at him and Ian’s heart stutters in his chest. It’s not healthy, he thinks, to find someone so completely contemptible and yet be happy...no, relieved to see them.

Ian shouldn’t be surprised to find out that McGray is the source of their tickets but, when probed about just how he managed to lay his hands on twenty tickets for the biggest game of the year, he becomes a uncharacteristically reticent and a faint blush spreads over his cheeks. There’s a story there, Ian reckons, and he’s curious to know what could possibly be bad enough to make McGray of all people blush like that.

 

The seating arrangement at Murrayfield seems oddly calculated when Ian finds himself planted squarely in the middle of a group that comprises not just a selection from the Glasgow and Edinburgh shinty teams but apparently McGray’s family as well. He looks more like his mother that his father - they really only seem to share dark hair and broad shoulders - and the affectionate kiss he presses to the top of his sister’s head leaves Ian missing Elgie fiercely.

The seat beside him is empty but it doesn’t remain that way for long because McGray steps over from the row behind him, which seems like a brave move given his wardrobe choices and Ian wishes desperately he could sink into the ground as he drops heavily into the plastic chair.

‘No seen you in a while.’And Ian hears the undercurrent there but he’s not entirely sure if it’s questioning or accusatory.

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Mmhmm. Ye dinnae have tae hide frae me, ye ken.’

Ian glances around at the people around them but everyone seems to be absorbed in their own conversations.

‘I’m not hiding, I just...we spoke not two days ago.’

‘That’s no the same.’

The space is so small and neither of them are particularly little so Ian assumes that no one around them is likely to think anything of the way that McGray has pressed his leg against Ian’s and that’s when he realises that this might just be McGray’s way of saying that he _missed_ him.

The thought makes something in his chest constrict and Ian doesn’t really think this is the time to be analysing whether or not the hollow feeling he’s carried around in the pit of his stomach for the last two months was dread or longing.

‘It’s not, no.’

There’s no space for further conversation until half time when clouds roll in and though the rain only lasts for a short ten minutes, it’s heavy enough to leave Ian drenched and shivering and gasping whilst everyone around him just seems to take this as part of the experience. The deep sigh from beside him is the only warning he has before McGray’s heavy jacket is dropped onto is shoulders and he’s not sure of that’s the source of the warmth or if it’s the full-body blush the act brings on. When his phone buzzes in his pocket and he finds that Elgie has sent him a photograph of a television screen he momentarily manages to forget his embarrassment until he opens the picture itself and realises its a slight grainy shot of him. He’s drowning in McGray’s jacket whilst the big Scot smirks down at him with his arm around the back of Ian’s chair. It’s the same smirk Ian remembers from New Year - smug but somehow soft as well - and a new knot of panic tightens in his stomach when he sees that Elgie has sent it to the family group chat by mistake.

_That doesn’t look like your coat, brother dearest._

Ian mutes the conversation and stuffs his phone back into his pocket and tries to think that it will bloody well serve them right if that’s what they think is going on. He chances a look at McGray and meets his eye.

‘Problem?’

‘Several.’

‘Ye can gie me an itemised list later then.’

‘I don’t think you have time for that.’

‘Oh I’ll make time, Duchess. Just you wait an see.’

 

It’s a close run thing, in the end, and even though England win it’s certainly not by enough of a margin for Ian to gloat about. He doesn’t know how McGray manages to get them stuck at the back of the steady flow of people leaving the stands. He knows it’s deliberate but he’s cold and weary and he doesn’t have the energy to argue in the way that he feels like he ought to.

‘Want me tae take ye hame?’

‘What?’

‘Well ye dinnae look fit fir the pub and...well frankly, Frey, we need tae talk. Properly. I’ve got the car at the house and it’s no that far a walk if yer up fir it...’

Ian knows well by now that the Scots have a bit of a strange concept of what constitutes a ‘short’ walk but he can’t disagree that the thought of sitting in a noisy pub for the next few hours is the least appealing though imaginable so he lets himself be lead away from the stadium and east towards the neat sandstone buildings of the New Town.

He’s not sure when he realises that McGray is far better off than he’d initially thought but the knowledge comes hand in hand with the revelation that McGray is also _deeply_ embarrassed by it and that is just _wonderful_.

 

Moray Place is devoid of any life when they reach it and Ian is only flagging a little bit and he knows McGray’s car by sight and not just because it’s parked alongside his bike. It stands out like a sore thumb alongside the sleek Audi’s and BMW’s that are parked around the little gated community garden and, where his bike was an elegant piece of machinery, his car is a 1970s American monstrosity in shiny black and Ian doesn’t know enough about cars to comment on it openly, he’s just relieved that it isn’t some tiny, cramped sports car.

As they reach it, McGray clears his throat.

‘I’m gonnae ask ye a question and...if ye say no then that’s fine and if ye say yes and ye hate it then that’s fine and all and I’ll drive ye hame and I’ll never bring it up again, alright?’

Ian’s a little bit wary because it’s a world away from the jovial, teasing tone he’s been using all day but he agrees nonetheless.

‘Alright...’

‘Can I kiss ye?’

There’s more distance between them now than there has been all day and Ian is really struggling to get his head around the idea of someone who spends all afternoon glued to his hip and then retreats the moment he asks something like _that_.

But it’s another escape route and it’s one that Ian is grateful for even as Elgie’s message flashes in his mind’s eye briefly and he remembers that there’s probably a slew of mocking messages from Laurence still to read and the jacket is still draped over his shoulders and McGray is looking at him like he’s some kind of frightened animal that might bite (and that’s an intrusive thought that he didn’t expect to find so appealing) and Ian doesn’t know what to do.

‘Here? In the middle of the street?’

That’s what comes out when he really means _are you completely sure_? Because McGray certainly has a reputation and Ian might not have one here but this is the kind of street where people who move in London circles live and Ian certainly has a reputation _there_ and it’s all very public.

‘There’s naebdy about and, even if there wis, they already think I’m half-mad.’

The only protest Ian can really offer is that he still really doesn’t even like McGray but when it comes out as a weak ‘ _oh fucking hell, I hate you_ ’ as he reaches out for him it doesn’t carry much weight.

 

McGray closes the distance between them in two long strides and Ian finds himself gently but firmly pressed against the side of the car with McGray’s hands sliding just beneath the collar of his shirt to tilt his head upwards and Ian’s instinct is to just keep talking because this? This is rather nice and he’s not entirely sure they need to find out if it could be better because-

And then McGray is kissing him. Really kissing him - as though this is the only chance he’s got and he’s determined to make the most of it and all Ian can do is grasp blindly for the edge of his shirt, fist his hands into the soft fabric and hold on for dear life because his knees have given out on him and there are stars exploding behind his eyes.

 

He’s always been a little torn between a need to get exactly his own way and a deep desire to be treated like royalty and he knows it tends to make him a very selfish sort of lover but all thoughts like that fly out of his mind when McGray shifts to tangle one hand in Ian’s hair whilst he ghosts the other across his chest and down his side and pulls him closer with a broad hand pressed into the small of his back and Ian just melts and fucking _whines_ into the kiss.

The noise draws something that’s half laugh, half groan from McGray and when he finally breaks the kiss they’re both flushed and panting and McGray just rests his forehead against Ian’s and smiles. He seen McGray laugh before, usually at his expense, and there’s that irritating, obnoxious smirk to consider as well but this is a bright, genuine smile and the feeling it stirs in Ian is novel to say the least.

‘Ye know, all that and I’m still half expecting ye tae slap me.’

‘I still might.’ Ian says and he’s surprised to hear his own voice so cracked and husky. ‘It’s _definitely_ still an option.’

McGray’s laugh rumbles through Ian’s chest.

‘We still need tae talk...I jist wisnae sure I could be trusted tae drive wi ye looking so fucking pretty.’ Ian ought to bristle at that but it doesn’t come across as emasculating as his usual insults. ‘Right...let’s get ye hame afore I embarrass both ae us.’

 

The drive to Glasgow is quiet but every so often McGray brushes his knuckles against Ian’s knee and glances over at him as though he’s checking he’s still there and when they pull up outside his door, he’s a little surprised (and a little relived in equal measure) when his invitation to come upstairs is refused.

‘Naw. Ye need time tae think, I can see that much. Dinnae make yer mind up until after yer exams.’

‘I’ll be back in London by then.’

‘After summer then. At the risk ae sounding like a complete sap, waiting fir ye isnae something I mind.’

And how different was that to his previous experiences? Eugenia had had a five year plan and his previous abortive relationships had always demanded time and answers and now he was just about willing to throw himself headfirst into whatever this was and McGray was telling him to wait.

‘After summer, then.’

‘And dinnae think this is gonnae stop me fae tanning seven hells out ae ye in Dublin.’

Ah yes, Ian had nearly forgotten the much fabled trip to Dublin just after exams for a composite shinty-hurling tournament against the Irish universities that apparently involved the lot of them drinking from the moment they set foot on the ferry and generally not stopping until they got home at the end of the week.

‘Perish the thought. Though I might even let you get a few good hits in if you promise to make it up to me later.’

And that’s what finally breaks McGray. The next time he speaks, his voice is laced with something dark and decidedly dangerous.

‘Duchess, I suggest ye go now afore I change my mind.’

He doesn’t drive off until Ian is upstairs, which is just around the time he decides that he can ignore his phone for one more night and deal with his family in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Streets of Dreamers - Tide Lines: https://youtu.be/3MTuj7Uy5c8
> 
> Oh man. This is the thing that started it all because IT IS SIX NATIONS SEASON and I Am Thriving. Fact: I have worn the exact outfit I’ve put McGray in in this chapter and lemme tell you it is the sexiest thing I’ve ever worn and if you don’t believe me then you are Wrong. 
> 
> You were also spared an entire page of my soliloquising on what it’s like to hear Flower of Scotland sung in Murrayfield and an Scotland-England match because, let me tell you, you feel it in your bones.


	9. April

_A slow dance as you place your hands in mine, there was never a better time, moving to this ancient haunting melody._

\- _Take My Hand_ , Skerryvore

* * *

 

If November was surprisingly warm then Ian manages to take back just about every good thing he’s ever said about Scotland by the end of April. It rains non-stop for two weeks and the wind that accompanies it cut through even his heaviest coats. He could always see patches of bright blue sky but they never seemed to be on top of him and as he sat in the library revising lists of names and dates and writing practice essays for his exams, he did so with one headphone in, waiting for the inevitable moment where McGray would call and refuse to speak English in the hopes of making Ian’s own Gaelic skills a little less robotic in preparation for those exams.

It’s interesting because he learns all sorts of odds things about McGray, simply by dint of his limited vocabulary and it’s also a handy mechanism for avoiding the topic of _them_. That nearly falls apart when he finds out the McGray plays pipes, throughly derides him over it and receives a response that he doesn’t need to understand to know that it’s absolutely filthy. He swims, regularly, which doesn’t help Ian’s concentration at all, but apparently gets so horrendously seasick that he has to be drugged, drunk or knocked over the head in order to get him on a ferry. More interesting is that, following half a semester at Oxford, he returned home to get a degree in Distilling of all things before returning to his first love of folklore. When Ian finally gets him to admit that his father owns three not insignificant distilleries across the Hebrides, ones that he’s even seen in the drinks cabinets of the great and good across London, the reality of just how well-off he is hits home.

The thing that Ian struggles most with is the poetry and McGray’s advice of ‘sing it’ doesn’t help a damn bit because Ian couldn’t sing to save his life.

Which is how he learns that McGray certainly can and even if it does’t help him understand a damn thing, he spends one rather pleasant afternoon with McGray singing century-old love songs down the line and he’s sure he’ll at least remember that in his exam.

Elgie remains true to his word and sends Ian a very nice bottle of champagne by way of apology for his slip at the rugby and, in return, Ian doesn’t question how he managed to orchestrate it from Eton but he suspects Uncle Maurice’s heavy involvement.

 

His birthday creeped up on him in a rather insidious sort of way when Eugenia, of all people, was the first to send him a message.

_I know it’s still a few days away but we’re going to Venice so we’ll miss it. Happy Birthday, Ian x_

It seems nice. Too nice given the facts of their relationship and Ian has a nagging feeling that he’s being used as some kind of weapon against Laurence and although he ignores the message and carries on as normal, his birthday was always going to be one of those events that reminds him a little too strongly of how things used to be.

Last year, just after he’d been accepted into the police, he’d taken Eugenia to Iceland because it had seemed like a good idea at the time and because those had been the first last-minute flights available. They had both nearly frozen half to death and she wasn’t speaking to him by the end of the week and Ian still hadn’t realised what was just about to happen to him.

Iceland has been rather unfortunately maligned in his head because of it but he does briefly entertain the rather ridiculous idea of McGray, who certainly has a touch of the Viking about him, standing on an icy volcanic beach bedecked in fur until it morphs into an image of McGray in nothing _but_  the furs and Ian has to pinch his leg hard enough to bruise to shake himself out of it. He’s having enough trouble with McGray without making it worse for himself on purpose.

The point is that he rarely celebrates his birthday and can’t recall even having a party (perhaps when he was little, before his mother passed) and though he doesn’t refuse to give it out, he has never volunteered the information without a good deal of interrogation and he absolutely abhors the idea of surprise parties.

 

So when McGray texts him two days before his birthday, Ian is understandably suspicious.

_I ken it’s no really your thing, but Skerryvore and Skipinnish are playing Fort William the day after tomorrow and I’ve a spare ticket. Ye want tae come?_

Ian is wracking his brain to try and figure out how McGray could have possibly gotten his hands on his birthday and, despite everything that happened at the rugby, Ian briefly considers his little conspiracy theory again but tosses it away. This is just the sort of thing McGray _does_. He’s forever away at conferences and gigs and odd little festivals and this is just a coincidence.

The danger is in spending another night away from the safety of home now that there’s this thing between them and Ian is acutely aware that, despite what was said about waiting until after the summer, he will probably do something very silly given half the chance.

But he’s been in that library for what feels like a lifetime and his exams don’t start until the middle of the week after his birthday and he needs a break. So he says yes and spends the next two days resolutely denying that he’s burning up with excitement.

 

He’s expecting the bike but McGray turns up in the kilt again, this time with a soft black shirt that was tied very loosely at his collar and Ian is short-circuiting from the get go.

‘Really?’

‘Well ye seemed tae like it last time and I’ve never knowingly needed an excuse.’

‘You’re completely impossible, you know that?’

‘Aye but yer sae much mair _fun_ when yer flustered.’

Ian sulks for the majority of the drive, just on principle and McGray just laughs at him.

 

They’re staying in a little hostel in the middle of the town - nothing fancy but it was the last place available - and Ian cycles through too many emotions to recognise when they’re only handed one key but panic turns to relief (and maybe a little disappointment) when it turns out to be a twin room. It’s a twin room in the sense that there are two single beds but the room is so tiny that there’s barely space to stand between them and, even sitting cross-legged with their backs against either wall, their knees are nearly touching.

It’s a night out unlike any that Ian has experienced. They have an early dinner at some cosy little pub before sitting in their room for two hours passing a bottle of cheap red wind between them. McGray tells him that the cheap wine is part of the experience and that it’s ‘ _got tae be a little bit shit’_ but a bottle of not so cheap Highland Park is drawn out once the wine is gone and when Ian needles him about the _experience_ he just scoffs.

‘I said “experience”, no fuckin’ torture.’

No mention is made of kisses or decisions and it’s almost as relaxed and easy as their telephone conversations except now Ian can see the way McGray tips his head back against the wall and smiles when he does that little throaty laugh when Ian says something he finds funny.

 

Ian doesn’t know why he’s taken up against accordions in particular when he’s presented with bands who seem replete with bagpipes but even he can’t deny that the sheer energy in the room is infectious. Which is why he’s distracted enough to be caught by the arm by a perfect stranger and swung into a dance that he doesn’t know the steps to (though he’s saved by the fact that no one else seems to know either) and McGray only deigns to save him after a hearty laugh at his expense. Ian is tugged out of the gaggle if people and pulled close against McGray’s chest.

‘I’ve got ye.’ _He certainly has_ , Ian thinks. ‘That’s twice ye’ve let someone drag ye up tae dance.’

‘And there will not be a third time, I assure you.’

Except the pipe set has ended and they’re striking up something slower and Ian recognises the song vaguely as one that McGray tends to sing and it’s not a romantic song _at all_ but, all the same, McGray’s hands have trailed down his arms and Ian has had enough dancing lessons over the years to respond before he even gets a chance to think about refusing and then they’re dancing - slowly and a little clumsily and Ian can feel McGray smiling against his temple and Ian is nearly mortified by the fact that they’re in a packed hall but no one has even glanced in their direction and no one knows them here so why does he even care?

And that’s when he realises that this whole thing has been a set up.

‘You utter bastard. How did you know?’

McGray doesn’t quite kiss his cheek but he keeps his voice so low and his mouth so close to Ian’s ear that it feels like a kiss all the same.

‘Yer wee brother seemed tae think ye might need cheering up.’

Elgie. That interfering little git was going to get the beating of his life when Ian got back to London. And then possibly taken out to dinner but that would only be after Ian told him exactly what he thought about this underhand, conniving little trick.

‘And how does this...’

‘Mmm, shhh. It doesnae change anything...ye can dae whatever the fuck ye like tonight and it doesnae mean I’ll expect anything in the morning.’

It feels like the best of both worlds - a solution both to Ian’s uncertainty and his curiosity - so he stops trying to resist and lets McGray lead and if the rest of the night is spent with McGray’s arm loosely around his waist then Ian finds he doesn’t care at all.

 

‘Why are you being so patient about this?’ He asks once they’ve made it back to the hostel and to the relative privacy of their room. ‘Because that’s what I can’t work out.’

In response, McGray leans forwards and holds out one hand, palm up, in front of him and Ian doesn’t hesitate to slide his own into it. For a man who spends his life translating old manuscripts and transcribing hours of tape reels, his hands are rough and calloused against Ian’s own and it’s a contrast he rather likes.

‘Ye come frae a completely different world. A different fucking planet I think sometimes, granted, but...tell me whit would happen if we’d done that at one ae yer fancy English clubs?’

Even thinking about it was enough to give Ian heart palpitations.

‘Aside from the ridiculous idea that they would ever let you though the door dressed like that...’ McGray squeezes his hand as though to tell him that he recognises that Ian is panicking and that  he’s resorted to insults to cover it. ‘...We’d be thrown out, for a start, torn to pieces by gossip columns, for my part my family probably wouldn’t publicly disown own me in case it reflected badly on _them_ but they would certainly make it clear that I was no longer welcome.’

A flicker of something that looked like real anger passed through McGray’s eyes and he raises Ian’s hand to soft, fleeting kisses against his knuckles.

‘D’ye want tae ken whit my parents said tae me?’

‘They _know_? About _me_?’

It’s a downright squeak.

‘A family that actually talk tae each other, I _know_. Ye’ll get used tae it.’

‘What did they say?’

‘After my father stopped laughing at me fir falling for a fucking Englishman, he told me it wis about fucking time. We do things differently, up here, and maybe it’s no perfect and we’ve our fair share ae tits but...it’s safe here.Ye dinnae have tae be anything except yersel...even if that is a prissy wee Duchess sometimes.’

‘I just wish I knew what to _do_.’

It comes out as little more than a desperate whisper and Ian is quite sure it’s the most vulnerable he’s ever allowed himself to be in front of another person. McGray says nothing - just lies back on his bed and presses himself as close to the wall as he can and the invitation is clear. There’s just about enough space for Ian to lie down beside him if he lays his head on his shoulder and so long as McGray holds onto him, Ian isn’t likely to fall off the bed in the middle of the night.

His last thought before he drifts off to sleep is something along the lines of _ha, as if McGray would ever let go_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take My Hand - Skerryvore: https://youtu.be/lOM-TK_4_W4
> 
> The song I have in mind for that dance is called Hervest of the Homeland, by Skipinnish, and it’s really, genuinely not a romantic tune but it fills my wee heart wi joy. >  
> https://youtu.be/RC6WKyKjlBY
> 
> I have, in fact, actually finished writing this (which is a relieve because I have two essays due in by the end of the month that I haven’t technically started yet because hyperfixation Is Not My Friend) which means I should get the final chapters posted over the weekend.


	10. May

_Take a knock, take a bang, take a smack, take a clatter, in years to come none of it will matter. To run like the wind and to leap like the salmon, a small price to pay to say you’ve held a caman._

\- _The Caman Man_ , Gary Innes 

* * *

 

May explodes with a burst of colour and warmth that seems all the more prominent given April was a deluge from start to finish and Ian walks out of his final exam and straight into the mini-bus they’ve hired to take them to Dublin. They meet St Andrews and Edinburgh on the ferry to Belfast and it’s far less awkward seeing McGray again than he’s been fearing. This mostly stems from the fact that he’s absolutely green by the time they set off and Ian finds him tucked into the furthest corner of the bar where he can’t see any of the windows.

There’s a sheen of sweat across his forehead and, when he spots Ian coming though the door, he groans and drops his head onto the bar.

Ian, who had been expecting the whole thing to be an over exaggeration, takes pity on him and doesn’t tease him. There’s no one else in the bar with them so he doesn’t hesitate to lay a cool hand against the burning skin on the back of McGray’s neck.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

There’s a mumble from the bar that sounds a little like ‘tea an sympathy’ but for two hours he doesn’t move, except to take Ian’s hand and hold it so tightly under the table that Ian’s not sure he’ll be fit to hold a caman at the end of it, and the others seem to be familiar enough with the routine to not seek him out until they make dry land and even then it’s only to bundle him into the back of the bus to sleep it off for a few hours.

 

Ian isn’t sure what to make of Dublin so he keeps his mouth shut and just watches. He feels hangover-free and decidedly smug on Saturday morning, especially compared to his bleary eyed teammates, as they line up for their first game against Cork but it lasts only long enough for McGray to lean over the stands with a can of beer in his hand.

‘At ten o’clock in the morning, really?’

‘This is fir you. Ye look far too alert.’

‘I rather thought that was the point.’

‘Oh dear, no. Ye dinnae want tae be sober fir whit’s about tae happen...did they no explain that the drinking is a kind ae tactical defence mechanism?’

Ian doesn’t believe him but, ten minutes in and he’s sitting on the sidelines with blood running down his face and McGray laughing heartily from the other side of the field. He’ll never let it be said that he makes the same mistake twice (which he maintains is also true for McGray because he knows he’s going to make that mistake several times) and starts drinking early for the successive games and by the time they play Edinburgh on the Monday, Ian is ready.

 

It’s a brutal, bloody, no-holds-barred match that no one walks away from unharmed but they all collapse in a growing pile in the common room of the hostel they’ve taken over and slowly, one by one, they recover enough to consider things like food and drink and Ian knows the sky is falling when someone suggests games.

It’s a terrible plan, he points out, because they’re all far too drunk for anything like Ring of Fire and he outright vetos Never Have I Ever on principle and when someone suggests and old school round of Truth or Dare, enough people agree that Ian is certain it will take too long to reach him before they get bored.

This is around the time that he realises that maybe McGray might have been right about things being far more different in Scotland than he realises because, three turns in, Eilidh looks him straight in the eye and, with no pretence whatsoever, dares him to kiss McGray.

‘Are you insane?’

‘Would you like a forfeit?’

‘What is the forfeit?’

Because knowing Eilidh, it will be something even more humiliating. It’s only after he asks that he thinks to look at McGray and he doesn’t even hear what degrading thing Eilidh was proposing because McGray looks furious.

‘ _Scott_ , jist gie it a fucking rest.’

‘Oh come on, McGray, lighten the fuck up.’

‘Away an bile yer hied, this has gone too far.’

‘It’s a joke, Christ, you’re acting like...’

‘ _Scott_.’

It comes out as a fierce growl and Ian’s never see him look so incensed. The thought that it’s on his behalf galvanises Ian’s aching muscles into standing and he’s crossing the room with little regard for the people in his way and he’s a little unsteady on his feet so, when he reaches the couch that McGray is sitting on, he overshoots, catches his shins on the edge of the seat and tumbles forwards to find himself half-straddling McGray who is just as surprised to see him as Ian is to be there and Ian hears the whole room take a breath and it’s that silence, combined with the alcohol he supposes, that spurs his shaky confidence and he sinks into McGray’s lap and is kissing him before he has time to change his mind.

It’s the first time Ian has even considered instigating anything like this and it’s messy and rushed and for a heartbeat McGray doesn’t respond at all and fear sparks in Ian’s chest but it sputters and dies as McGray slides his hands along Ian’s thighs and pulls him closer until they’re pressed flush and McGray doesn’t often leave his hair untied but Ian is _delighted_ because from this angle he can tangle his hands it it and when his nails scrape against his scalp, McGray gives a full-body shudder and rolls his hips upwards and Ian’s so surprised at _that_ development that it shocks him back into the present and he realises that then have a very attentive audience and this is not the time or the place to explore how he feels about being able to raise that kind of reaction from McGray but actually bringing himself to stop is harder than he had ever anticipated.

In the end, McGray nips his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood and Ian leans back, panting, and McGray only meets his eye for a moment (and he looks wild and damn near wanton) before he drops his head onto Ian’s chest and only holds him tighter when Ian moves to get off of him.

‘Fuireach a-nis, a ghràidh...Chan eil mi...chan urrainn dhomh... _fuck_.’

The tension is broken when someone (and Ian can’t think clearly enough to turn and see who) starts a long, slow clap.

‘Didn’t think you had that in you Frey.’

A muttered response that sounds something a little like ‘I think he’s about to have something else in him in a minute’ is silenced with a thump and a groan.

The volume slowly rises around them and they become little more than a background curiosity and Ian really wonders if McGray has fallen asleep because he hasn’t moved at all, so he pokes him in the neck and slowly, McGray sits back and stares at him as though Ian is actually something precious.

‘Now don’t take this as pressure or anything but I swear tae god if ye break my heart after that then I may never speak tae ye again.’

‘Would it? Break your heart?’

He licks a tiny smear of blood from his lip.

‘Aye, I reckon it would.’

And that was only Monday.

 

By the next morning, word has clearly got around that it’s a touchy subject (and there are a few suspiciously fresh black eyes that suggest to Ian that McGray spent most of the night _ensuring_ that word got around) and not a single joke is cracked at his expense.

McGray tries to maintain the distance they’ve kept before now but his resolve is crumbling and Ian finds him pacing outside his room on Tuesday night, evidently arguing with himself and watches him for a full five minutes before McGray looks up and Ian just steps back to let him in. The jokes come the morning after that but it’s nothing nasty and it’s nothing Ian can’t take with something approaching good grace.

Wednesday night finds them in wandering the city and Ian stops McGray when they cross one of the multitudes of bridges that crowd to river and rather thinks it’s no or never.

‘I know you said I should wait until after summer.’

‘And ye should. Go back hame, be yerself fir a while...’

‘I am quite myself, thank you. I also recall your initial deadline was after exams.’

‘Aye well...’

‘Am I to assume that, after summer, you’re just as likely to tell me to wait until after Christmas?’

McGray sighs and leans against the edge of the bridge and Ian stands just close enough to hold his hand loosely. It was his way of trying to give the same kind of escape routes McGray always gave him but it was harder than he realised.

‘This is new tae ye and...’

‘You know I _have_ had sex with men before.’ He thinks it’s the matter-of-fact delivery and rather the statement itself that has McGray choking but he’s finding a new sort of enjoyment in taking him by surprise and so he just stands back and waits for him to regain his composure. ‘I assume that’s what this is about.’

‘No...I mean...aye, I suppose but it’s no jist that. There’s mair tae a relationship than jist...’

‘I know...’ Ian says and he steps forwards, standing between McGray’s legs and tilting his face up. With one knuckle under his chin ‘...and...and if you insist on telling me to wait until after summer then well that’s exactly what you’ll have to do.’

He turns, stepping over McGray, and leaves him sitting there dumbstruck until the string of curses reaches him and he stops just long enough to let McGray catch up.

 

Thursday is the final and it’s Cork and St Andrews and it’s one of the cleaner matches of the week if only because everyone is too sick, sore or exhausted to inflict much real damage. The match itself is a fair tie and Cork win on accrued points and the celebration party is a little damp when everyone is just about ready to go home.

Ian, who knows what happens to people who fall asleep at parties and is therefore incapable of it, retires early and tosses and turns all night as he contemplates the months of summer ahead of him.. 

The busses for their return are a spilt more safely between people who are thought to be at risk of throwing up and those who would just like to continue sleeping and that’s how he spends some three hours sprawled across the back seat of a mini-bus, his back against McGray’s chest, having his hair braided and unbraided. He will really need to get it cut before he returns to London but, for now, the sensation sends him to sleep so thoroughly that he doesn’t wake up until they’re already parked on the car deck of the ferry and McGray is already looking a little peaky and they haven’t even left the docks yet but he does accept the invite to come back to Ian’s flat instead of trying to get all the way to Edinburgh and they both fall asleep on the settee and wake up stiff, tangled and uncomfortable and aware that this is it.

On Saturday he packs up the flat, puts the things he either cant or wont take with him into storage and kisses McGray once, quite firmly, before he gets on the train.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Caman Man - Gary Innes: https://youtu.be/qyt74s-9J6o
> 
> *Fuireach a-nis - Wait just now  
> a ghràidh - love  
> Chan eil mi... - I’m not...  
> chan urrainn dhomh... - I can’t...
> 
> Composite rules Shinty/Hurling is pretty much the only way anyone gets to play international games and they’re similar enough to make the composite rules thing work but different enough to make it the single most terrifying thing in the world.


	11. June

_Bring the summer, bring the rain, bring me anything, I’ll see you once again. Bring the autumn, bring the tears, bring me anything I’ll see you through the years._

\- _Bring the Summer_ \- Tide Lines

* * *

 

Ian is almost sad to be going home, not that London has ever felt particularly homey, but he’s not likely to say that out loud. He thinks about flying down but instead he books himself a first-class seat on the train and draws it out as long as he possibly can.

He forgets to get a haircut, forgets to do anything about the bumps and scrapes and bruises that he’s covered in from Dublin and instead spends the whole time trying to think of an appropriate way to tell McGray that he didn’t plan on running away from him any time soon.

It’s just as well because, when he steps through the door of the house it’s into a battle scene. It appears as though Laurence and Eugenia have had some kind of disagreement over the wedding and he hears his name being thrown around in an accusatory manner and decides to slip into the drawing room to avoid the scene upstairs. 

His father is nursing a headache and a large brandy but Elgie looks happy to see him at least.

‘What happened to your face!?’

He reaches up to touch the rather impressive bruise across his jaw and waves it off.

‘Ran into a brick wall.’ Which he thinks McGray absolutely counts as. ‘It’s nothing.’

That’s only half the story but, given the fact that the other half involved a very very drunk McGray pinning him to his bedroom door and proceeding to kiss it better so thoroughly that Ian is certain it’s more hickey than sporting injury, he leaves it there and is just grateful that Elgie takes the hint and doesn’t push it further.

 

Summer in London is just as uncomfortable as he has always remembered and it gets worse with the endless stream of visitors and vendors and wedding planners, so much so that Ian is quietly very relieved that it’s not his wedding.

Catherine makes fun of his hair at every opportunity and so Ian abandons all plans of cutting it altogether, just to annoy her, and the more they tell him that he looks scruffy, the more he just smiles and nods and says he’ll do something about it for the wedding. McGray tells him he should dye it green, just to spite them, and it’s a mark of how much this year has changed him because he seriously considers it for a moment.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter that Catherine thinks he’ll ruin the wedding pictures because he isn’t even there for the wedding.

 

The 23rd of June dawns bright and warm and Ian awakes several hours before his alarm, quite suddenly, with a heavy feeling of dread sitting on his chest. A week from the wedding, he’s become used to the growing feeling of trepidation but this is different. He wakes up somewhere just after five in the morning and just knows the day is doing to be a disaster from start to finish.

The feeling grows exponentially when he sits down to breakfast and finds Laurence and his father discussing the news.

‘Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if there were drugs involved. That’s the sort of thing you see up there.’

“Up there” for Laurence could mean anywhere from North London to Lerwick but there was only one subject, save Ian’s spectacular failings, that could incite his father to such vitriol.

‘Degenerates the lot of them. Never met a decent one.’

And just a year ago Ian would have thought nothing of it but now his heart thuds furiously and defensively and he bites back.

‘One bad business deal does not make a whole country of villains and you, _brother dearest_ , have never been north of Roxburgh. What would you know?’

His father sets his teacup down on the saucer carefully and looks downright gleeful about shattering Ian’s perceptions.

‘Oh ho, is that right? Well some teenaged lunatic has just knifed her whole family in Dundee, so how is that for your precious Scotland.’

Ian is already opening his mouth to argue that London has it’s fair share of parricidal maniacs and, frankly, Ian was beginning to see the appeal but the specific words began to filter through and Ian actually feels the blood drain from him.

‘So there, not so special now is it. What was the name, Laurence? Something common?’

‘MacLean I think, or MacLevy...’

‘McGray.’

There are a plethora of families in Dundee with teenage daughters and Ian doesn’t believe in precognition but he can feel the bile churning in his stomach and he knows.

‘Yes, that’s it. Either way, killed the whole lot of them they said...it was on the news a moment ago.’

Laurence, who hasn’t played any form of sport since university, doesn’t stand a chance when Ian shoulders him out of the way in a desperate search for the television remote and turns frantically to the twenty-four hour news. It takes four tries to get the numbers right with his frozen, shaking hands but eventually a picture flickers to life of amoderately large old farmhouse that Ian has seen is photographs from McGray a dozen time. It’s surrounded by police cars and ambulances and Ian can’t even see the headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen because even though the cameras have been held back down the long driveway, the shot is clear enough and the television big enough for him the instantly recognise McGray’s hulking form pacing back and forth between two police cars and it’s hard to make out any details but his white shirt is drenched in blood and he’s shouting at someone off screen and pointing with a hand that’s been wrapped in a bulky white bandage.

‘No control at all, shouldn’t be allowing them away from the crime scene.’ Ian watches as McGray kicks the wheel of the car nearest to him and stalks over the the wall of the house where he fumbles to get something out of his pocket that must be his phone. ‘And damaging police property, he’ll get done for that at least.’

Ian throws the remote at Laurence and is reaching for his phone before it even starts to ring and what hurts most of all is the way McGray sounds as though it’s perfectly normal day.

‘Didnae expect ye up this early, Duchess.’ Ian can’t speak for a moment. Two minutes ago he’d been certain that McGray was dead and his voice sticks in his throat. ‘Frey? Whit’s...’

‘It’s on the news.’

‘Fuck.’

It’s a soft, quiet curse but it’s accompanied by a stout punch to the wall with his bandaged hand and a roar of pain as Ian can only watch as he curls in on himself, gasping in pain. Eventually, his breathing evens and he lets himself slide down the wall to sit on the ground.

‘Tell me what you need.’

‘A ghràidh, no.’

‘For fuck sake McGray! This is not the time to play the fucking hero!’

He knows his father and brother are staring at him, that they’re probably starting to add up all of the oddities and arguments and late-night phone calls and he knows deep in his soul that he is leaving that house, one way or another, that very morning,.

‘Iain...’ He’s quite sure that it’s the first time McGray has ever used his first name and the soft, slenderised Gaelic form takes him by surprise. ‘Feumaidh mi thusa.’

I need you.

‘You have me.’

 

Before he’s even finished speaking, Ian is running upstairs, throwing things haphazardly into a bagand digging desperately to find his headphones so he doesn’t have to hang up on McGray to book a taxi and find flights.

‘Would it be terrible of me to beg you not to hang up until I’m on the plane?’

McGray’s laugh comes out as a choked sob.

‘Cannae say I’ll be any great conversation.’

‘You don’t have to be I...I just...I thought you were dead.’

He just wants to be able to hear him breathe but he can’t say that when his family are following him around, taking more of an interest in his life than they have in years. Only Elgie doesn’t hound him and, instead, catches his quietly at the door as he waits on the taxi.

‘Is he alright?’

It’s only then that Ian remembers that Elgie and McGray have been conspiring for months to pull Ian’s head out of his arse and that there are other implications if their father suspects Ian’s doing this out of any kind of feeling. Implications for Ian, certainly, but more importantly for Elgie who still has to live here.

‘I don’t know. Look...just keep your head down and think about what I said about the Conservatoire.’

 

He frets from the moment he has to hang up on McGray on the plane but at least he knows he’s in a car on the way to Moray Place and Ian doesn’t have to worry about trying to get to Dundee but the taxi from the airport is a rude awakening to how fast news can travel because when Ian gives the direction, his drivers asks if he’s a reporter here about Nine-Nails McGray and Ian can only bite his tongue and lie and say that he’s there to see family.

The taxi has to drop him at the far end of the circle because the usually quiet street is clogged with news vans and reporters crowded around the doorsteps and there’s no sign of any crowd control and no way that he’s going to be able to push his way through.

The idea comes to him as he shoulders his bag and catches the side of his head with his caman. Why he took it to London instead of leaving it in storage with the rest of his things he doesn’t know but it’s here now and it’s a stupid idea but it’s also exactly the kind of ridiculous stunt he would expect McGray to pull and that’s good enough for him.

He withdraws it and then secures his bag across his back and approaches the back of the journalists laughing and joking over coffee and they barely even glance at him as he asks them to move.

So he slides his hand down to the middle of the caman and, wielding it one handed, applies it firmly to the back of the knees of the man directly in front of him in a move he saw Mairi use on a particularly large player from Donegal. It works for Ian much the same way it did for her.

‘Let me try again. I’m reliably informed that this is a piece of sporting equipment but I can say from first hand experience that it does very good job of breaking bones so I suggest you get the fuck out of my way.’

It works, mostly, and he only has to assault two more people before he comes out at the front step of number 27. He owes his success largely to the presence of a single, slightly weedy police officer who takes a step towards Ian and gets a caman under his chin for his trouble.

‘Don’t fucking bother.’ And now he’s pouring every ounce of upper class contempt he can muster into his words. ‘Call yourself a a bloody police force...I will be speaking to your boss before this is over.’

And with that he’s clear up the steps and the door is opened by a short, balding man with a tired, kindly face who points him to a door down the hall.

‘Heard the commotion. You must be Ian?’

‘I am.’

‘I’m Doctor Clouston...a family friend. He’s in the study, staunchly recusing medical treatment. Try and talk some sense into him for me?’

Ian wonders if they’re talking about the same person because the McGray he knows isn’t capable of listening to sense.

Except he quickly realises on walking into the study that this is not the McGray he knows. Not any more.

 

The curtains are drawn and the room is only lit by a few cracks of light that manage to sneak through. McGray is sitting hunched on the floor against the end of a heavy mahogany desk in the same blood-stained shirt Ian saw him in the morning except now he can see that there’s a long tear down the front of it. His arms are propped up on his knees and in one hand he’s holding a crystal decanter of whisky. The other is still wrapped in a very clumsy, makeshift bandages and the blood has soaked through that as well.

He doesn’t move except to tilt his head towards the noise when Ian closes the door.

‘That wis a pretty speech.’

‘Yes, I just thought ‘what would McGray do?’ and shouting and blunt force trauma seemed to be the answer.’

There’s a cough but it sounds agonising and Ian carefully moves into the room to crouch beside him.

‘Dinnae try and make me laugh. It fucking hurts.’

‘Can I see?’

‘I wouldnae come any closer, it’s a mess.’

‘And that’s different from you normally, how?’

He doesn’t stop Ian from kneeling at his side, or from taking the decanter from his hand and setting it on the floor. The blood on his shirt is cold and sticky and Ian has to breathe very carefully through his teeth to stop his head from spinning but even that doesn’t help him when he realises that it isn’t just a tear in his shirt, it’s a clean cut.

‘God above, is this your blood?’

Ian’s head is thudding as he pushes McGray’s knee to the floor so he can see to unbutton the shirt. McGray just tilts his head away and makes no move to resist him.

The wound cuts from his left shoulder down to his left hip. It’s deepest right across his breastbone and when a breeze stirs the curtains and the light dances a little, Ian thinks he can see the hint of white bone. It’s shallower towards the end, trailing off suddenly as though something got in the way.

_Nine-Nails McGray._

‘Yer feart ae blood. How can ye even look at me.’

‘I fainted _once_...’ Although he’s close to making it twice at this rate. ‘...and it’s you. I will always...’

 _I will always want to look at you_ , is what he wants to say, _because you are headstrong and obstinate and alive and you are mine._

‘It needs stitches. So will your hand.’

‘I’ve already told them I’m no going tae hospital so dinnae try tae nag me.’

‘Let me do it, then, I can at least remember how to do that properly.’ Ian pushed himself to his feet and holds out his hand. ‘I need you to lie down though.’

‘This is jist an elaborate excite tae get me intae bed, isn’t it?’

The words are joking but the tone of his voice is just weary and his eyes bloodshot and raw but he takes Ian’s hand all the same.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bring The Summer - Tide Lines: https://youtu.be/-6SvjcfbRss
> 
> (I am getting thoroughly twigged about how bloody hard it is to get decent, non-phone recordings of some of these songs.)


	12. July

_Cò am fear am measg an t-sluaigh A mhaireas buan gu bràth?_

_(Who among men endures eternally?)_

\- _An Eala Bhàn_ , Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna 

* * *

Ian wishes he could say that the first night wast the worst but it was as though something had lodged in McG ray’s chest and was gnawing away at him from the inside (and Ian had check and re-checked and re-checked his stitching for inflammation and oozing and it was fine. Messy, granted, but fine) and the first night was, comparatively, the easiest.

 

Dr Clouston was a Godsend. A psychiatrist by trade but just a generally competent sort of person, he sat Ian down one evening and explained everything he knew of what had transpired in that house and even Ian struggled to sleep for a while after that. He made sure there was food, acted as a mediator between McGray are the rest of the world and, without him, Ian was certain he would have crumbled. 

They slept in McGray’s room, Ian curled around his back with his hand pressed lightly into the dressings over his heart, and they said little day to day until Ian slowly (too slowly, he feels) comes to understand that his softly-softly approach isn’t helping anything because they’re both too afraid of scaring the other off and eventually the situation becomes untenable.

It’s a week to the day and the morning of the wedding, he notes absentmindedly, when Ian wakes up and decides that enough is enough. He climbs out of bed carefully so as not to wake McGray and runs a bath that, by rights, ought to be scalding. Then he prods McGray in the ribs and cajoles, berates and generally manhandles him through to the bathroom.

‘I need to check your dressings and then you’re going to have a bath and get dressed and I’m going to make lunch.’

‘Frey, dinnae...’

‘No. I don’t care. Come here and let me see if I’ve given you septicaemia yet.’

He wont say it out loud (not yet anyway) but he’s actually quite proud of the job he’s managed to do and, aside from the odd burst scab here and there, McGray is _actually_ healing. His hand is mess - the cleaver (and Ian has to suppress a shudder every time he thinks that) was sharp enough to cut straight through he joint but the skin was ragged and the scar is going to be bad. His chest, however, his healing well enough despite the size of it and some of the shallower stitches are already beginning to dissolve.

‘Ye make a fair enough seamstress, I suppose.’

‘Hmm. Get in the bath.’

And then they _argue_ and it’s such a relief that when Ian wins and pulls the door over (they agree not to close it and McGray is more sympathetic than he ought to be of Ian’s fear of having him behind a locked door) he nearly cries at how much of a relief it is.

They day progresses with a pattern of Ian making a decision, McGray arguing about it to within an inch of it’s life and then capitulating and then starting over again. Incrementally, by the next morning, he thinks they both feel a little more balanced.

 

The fly in the ointment comes in the form of one DCI Campbell and it’s unfortunate that he arrives on a morning where McGray has finally drifted off into a fitful sleep and Ian is the only one in. The man is... _officious_ , Ian thinks, and yet he offers coffee anyway because he’s also acutely aware that he did technically threaten one of his officers with a very large stick.

‘I’m here to speak to McGray.’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘Good fir him. The point stands that I am here, and I intend to see him.’

‘Then you’ll have to wait, I’m afraid, because I am not going to wake him up.’

‘Listen to me you poncy wee toerag...’

Is about as far as he gets because Ian really doesn’t like people pointing their fingers in his face and it’s just as Ian raises his hand to slap the offending limb away that McGray appears at the top of the stairs, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm and just _sighs_ when he sees Campbell.

‘Fuck d‘ye want ye bastard?’

Campbell looks between Ian and the door of the study.

‘Och fine.’

He takes each step heavily and stops to kiss Ian hard before he gestures for Campbell to lead the way. It’s the first time he’s kissed him since Ian arrived in Edinburgh and Ian isn’t sure if it’s to throw off Campbell or to placate _him_. 

‘This’ll only take a minute. I promise.’

He squeezes Ian’s hand once and then follows Campbell in, closing the door with a final click behind him and Ian can take the hint, certainly, but that doesn’t mean he goes far.

It’s not even ten minutes until Campbell leaves, looking only marginally less bristled than he was before and McGray only stalks out of the study when he’s sure the front door is firmly closed.

‘Sorry ‘bout that. It’s...’

‘I don’t need to know right now.’

He steps into Ian’s space and kisses him once softly, then again a little more insistently and then he backs him straight into the grandfather clock and kisses him slowly and languidly until the clock chimes above them.

‘I’ve missed that.’ Ian has as well but it hasn’t seemed right given the circumstances. ‘Will ye come back tae bed?’

‘We cannot go back to spending all day in bed, it’s not healthy.’

‘Jist the day, then. Ye’ve still no told me whit happened wi yer brother’s wedding.’

Oh dear, that disaster.

‘It was nothing.’

‘See cause I hear ye managed tae ruin it even though ye were wrestling me intae the bath.’

‘You can’t trust everything Elgie tells you.’

‘Oh, a ghràidh, he sent me the video.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An Eala Bhàn, as performed by Julie Fowlis: https://youtu.be/lSyYb9jO7vQ
> 
> I much prefer the Manran version but, once again, YouTube fails me miserably in the contemporary trad department.


	13. August

_But when I lie awake I grown uneasy with the path I have to take, the choice I have to make._

_\- Streets of Dreamers,_ Tides Lines

* * *

It isn’t easy. Even though Ian knows grief intimately, the loss of his mother from a slow illness can not possibly compare to the sort of trauma that McGray has gone through and Ian isn’t stupid enough to think that just because he’s eating and sleeping and arguing with him again, it means he’s _alright_.

But when he starts pulling out his PhD research again and rearranging the study and filling it with all manner of odd, old books that Ian thinks probably ought to be in a museum sometimes, he thinks that maybe he’s on the right track.

The first time he mentions the Devil, muttering under his breath in Gaelic as he pours over a huge tome, Ian just assumes it’s some kind of comment on the passage he’s reading.

The second time it’s equally innocuous, given how frequently the character seems to appear in McGray’s work.

The third time is when Ian wrestles him down from the bookshelves and pushes him into an armchair and demands an explanation. It’s far more difficult that it ought to be to get the truth out of him and Ian doesn’t know if he ought to be relieved to finally hear what happened or horrified when he explains his sister’s actions and what she said before she attached him.

‘I’ve made a deal wi Campbell. There’s cases like this stretching back fir centuries that’ve never been solved because naebdy’s willing tae listen tae folk who say that it’s no natural.’

Ian makes the mistake of looking sceptical McGray launches himself out of the chair to pace the room.

‘Look, I ken ye dinnae believe in any ae this stuff, maist folk dinnae, but...I ken whit I saw and I ken whit she said and Campbell’s gonnae let me set up a department, tae investigate this sort ae thing.’

Ian can see the mad gleam in his eye and tries to chose his words carefully.

‘I’m not saying you didn’t see _something_ but...there has to be a better explanation that the Devil. It’s not real.’

Ian expects him to shout but his next words are so quiet and so fierce that he knows that there’s not going to be any way to change his mind.

‘It is tae me. Frey, this is my culture, this is centuries ae folk like me who’ve had Fae and ghosts and, aye, fucking Devils playing wi their lives and everyone jist laughs at them. Aw, the poor, mad, backwards fucking Gaels, they jist cannae keep up with the rational world. Well fuck that. And fuck the folk out there that think I’m mad and ye ken whit, fuck yo-‘

‘Fuck me too if I don’t believe you?’ McGray kicks the side of the desk and looks a little contrite but doesn’t disagree with him. ‘What if you do this and all you ever do is prove that none of those things exist?’

‘Then am I no still doing some kindae good by giving a shit when other folk didn’t?’

‘And what happens when you’re too blinded by your own convictions to see that?’

McGray looks very much like he wants to hit him and Ian can’t say he would blame him.

‘Then come wi me.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

He doesn’t answer right away but, instead spins across to the other side of the desk and brandishes a signed piece of paper at him.

‘Campbell’s no willing tae waste any ae his ain men on it but he’s given me free reign tae find someone tae help me.’

Ian is too preoccupied with the title at the top of the page.

 _‘Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases, Presumably Related To The Odd and Ghostly_?’

‘It’s a bit wordy, aye, but...why no?’

He scans further down the paper - it promises office space, a very pathetic salary and the rank of Detective Inspector.

‘McGray, this isn’t even legal.’

‘Eh, it’s gonnae take a bit ae working around the system, aye, but they can employ me as a specialist first and it’s a walk in the park fae there.’

Ian just stares. He’s not sure what is more ludicrous - the paper in his hand or the man in front of him. If he let him do it on his own, it was going to get him killed. If he helps, then Ian is going to get himself killed.

‘Well? Whit d‘ye think?’

Ian sets the paper on the table and reaches forwards to pull McGray forwards by his hideous fucking yellow tartan waistcoat.

‘I _hate_ you, you mad bastard.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tide Lines - Streets of Dreamers: https://youtu.be/3MTuj7Uy5c8


	14. Epilogue

Ian learned several new things that night, like the fact that McGray was more in control of his strength than Ian ever gave him credit for and that the results of him _forgetting_ were interesting to say the least.

In lifting Ian bodily off of the floor and resolutely slamming him into the wall of the study, McGray not only managed to shake loose a large landscape oil painting but also Ian’s ribs. Ian’s determined to continue because McGray is already making quick work of his belt buckle but the problem is that he can’t breathe and as McGray is actually _biting_  his collar bone, he thinks he’s going blind with lust until the pain really begins to filter though and he realises that no, he _actually_  can’t breathe.

It’s probably not the most embarrassing thing that has been seen in the Royal Infirmary but trying to explain that he dislocated two ribs because McGray was trying to fuck him through the wall does not make the top of his list of great days out. It does, however, have the added benefit of getting McGray out of the house and back into the real world for a few hours, even if he hides behind the curtain of of the cubicle and mutters apologies against Ian’s neck the whole time and never _actually_  speaks to anyone. 

He makes up for it, in his own way, and now that he’s had time to calm down, he’s downright reverent when he runs his hands down Ian’s chest and Ian has to kick him to get him to hurry up because they’ve given him the most noxious painkillers and he’s having enough trouble staying awake as it is.

And he falls asleep with McGray wrapped around him this time, breathing hard and muttering obscenities and praise and what sounds suspiciously like _tha gaol agam ort_ over and over again and that’s the sound track that Ian eventually falls asleep to - McGray, broken and battered and almost certainly going a little bit mad, muttering _I love you_  into the back of his neck as though he’s terrified that Ian will disappear. 

 

He wakes up at four in the morning and just lies there, wondering just when his life became so bloody odd.


End file.
